Rising
by Locrian-Mode
Summary: Every insane hero needs a weird past. Buck is no different – in that respect, anyways. Ahab complexes, humans, and introducing the mysterious Knot…
1. You Wouldn't Have Come

**Every insane hero needs a weird past. Buck is no different – in that respect, anyways. Ahab complexes, humans, and introducing the mysterious Knot…**

**Don't own it. Doubt Buck would be any good to snuggle with anyways, he's too pointy. **

**Rising**

**Ch. 1: You Wouldn't Have Come**

"Rudy, old chump, you don't _really _mean that, do you?" he asked incredulously.

The white beast glowered. Buck's eyebrow fell from its hopeful arch into an annoyed squint. Knife in paw, he slid down the side of a boulder to land in the sand of the valley, at the base of his nemesis's cave.

"Come on, then. Getting senile in your old age, old man? Remember this?" He flipped the tooth knife into the air and caught it deftly. "You're gonna want this one back soon, all your other teeth are coming loose!"

Rudy heaved an irritated sigh. The weasel's face settled into desperation.

"Rudy, _come_ on." He stared hopelessly at the giant dinosaur in front of him. It was eerie, it was, to be standing there having to egg on his enemy. Rudy should be trying to stomp him into the dust and smash his brains against the canyon wall. Instead he was sprawled stiffly in the shade of his cave, attempting to catch a snooze. Or resting his joints. He'd been getting enough exercise chasing the weasel across the jungle, that was for sure, but Buck feared he'd overdone it this time. He took a few tentative steps closer, watching the dinosaur's eyes, which were focused on the stretching distance of the valley.

"You're absolutely no fun these days, you know that? You have gotten to be such an-"

He'd known the tail was coming, but he figured he'd give Rudy a sporting chance. The white, muscular appendage whipped out of the cave and clouted him in the side, effectively knocking the wind out of him. He sprung up from the dust, trying to draw air, an almost-smile gleaming on his fangs…

The tail slid back into the cave and the beast made no further move.

Buck stood, knife dangling loosely in his paw. He blinked, a bit confused.

Rudy was getting old. Having the mother dinosaur push him off the cliff had done him a hard one, and he'd never quite sprung back from the fall. Buck understood what it meant to age, understood that all things had their time. Rudy was, if a bit of a legend, still mortal.

Buck did not, however, understand why this was making him so nervous.

Rudy's rheumy eyes. His slower movements. Longer time spent sleeping. Skin clinging tighter to sharply-protruding bones. And his increasing apathy for the revenge he'd always wanted to exact upon the weasel who'd stolen his tooth.

"You just don't care anymore, do you?" Buck asked quietly. The beast's eyes focused briefly on the weasel and Buck was struck by their almost flawless indifference. "Alright, snowflake, you may not be up to facing me _now_, but you'll be feeling right as rain after a little shut-eye." He gave Rudy his best arrogant smirk before turning and strutting back into the jungle.

A touch of panic set his fur on end as the shadows closed around him, and he instinctually dropped to the ground, gripping his knife. He shook his head, knowing his fear was not being fed by some external entity. But he could not bring himself to his feet again. The knife was warm in his paw, but his paw felt cold, and he held the knife closer.

_Rudy is dying –_

"No! No, no, no. Rudy is _drying_, remember, he fell all the way down into that gorge last month, he's just drying out. He got very wet, you see." His reassurances sent his mind boomeranging back to the day his friends had left, gone back up to the world above, and he'd bounded back down to find Rudy, who was truly infuriated, and they'd had a great old time, broken a few bones – then Rudy'd stopped suddenly, stopped chasing Buck, and had simply crawled into his cave. He'd spent a lot of time there lately.

_He's dying – _

"Drying," he corrected himself, and tried to straighten up. He got halfway there, and was surprised to find himself slinking weasel-like through the jungle, something he always tried his hardest not to do. He may be a weasel, but that didn't mean he had to act like one. _Now look at you, cowering along like you don't own the place. Buck up!_

His spine would not straighten.

He let out a cry of frustration and started sprinting, pushing past the ferns and palms, until a thick tree trunk loomed suddenly in front of him. He sprung at it and caught the bark with three paws full of claws and a knife, and climbed as if a fire burned below him. His discontentedness sent him flying up the tree, and he found himself at the top in mere moments. He clung to the last branch that would support his weight, chest heaving, claws sunk into the wood.

Squinting against the wind, he surveyed his world. The lava fields were beginning to glow in the growing twilight; the icy, filtered light that came in through the cave ceiling was being replaced by a fiery illumination. The jungle below him would be reposing in complete darkness in a matter of minutes, and the canyon that contained Rudy's cave was caught in an awkward shade of dead-looking grey.

The wind caught the edge of his eye patch and snagged it off his head before he could move to catch it. He turned to watch it ripping away on the blustery currents, spinning madly on coils of air and quite suddenly dropping out of sight into the canopy of other leaves. When he turned back around the force of the wind stung his good eye and he felt tears starting to form. He swiveled on his perch, facing away, trying to protect his bad eye from further damage. Now the wind ruffled the back of his ears and he sighed, trying to enjoy the feeling. But his good eye was still leaking, the bugger. It was out of the wind, what else did it want?

And why in the world were his nerves so jangled?

Sometimes he got lonely. His solution was to marry pineapples and talk to skull puppets. Once in a while he felt a bit small and insignificant, but then he'd go take on some huge reptilian beast and feel better. Now and then he became aware of a strange, tugging darkness at the edge of his mind, but it never lasted for long. And that was happening less and less.

But it still happened, as the case would appear. He was troubled. And this time a somberness washed over him so poignantly that he couldn't even try to turn his mind away. _What am I doing down here?_ he asked himself. Really, Buck had no idea. He never thought about it, because doing so made him nervous. And he _was_ nervous. And now he didn't have the power to pull away from it.

This had never happened before. The tree wavered in the wind and he clung to it, and to his knife, his sole possession. He wanted to… he wanted… what? What?

"What, already?" he shouted angrily at the ceiling of his world. _Damn that Rudy! Damn him, the lumbering monstrosity! _It was his fault, of course. Rudy was behind this, Rudy was the one causing Buck this frustration, Rudy wanted him to be miserable. It's why he was white, wasn't that right, a big blank canvas, thought he could scare the Buckminster. He may have rendered Buck insane but Rudy had _not_ won, he never _would_ win –

_Rudy is dying!_

Thoughts careened around the inside of his skull but he refused to examine any of them, thus rendering his stream of consciousness desperately blank. Wasn't it always blank?

"You're insane," he chided himself.

"I know."

"Completely, utterly mad. You're an absolute basket case."

"I _know_."

"You need help, you know that, you should-"

"Oh, bug off."

"Don't interrupt me when I'm talking to me."

"You don't even know who you're talking about!"

"Exactly!"

_I've gone insane._

His head couldn't take it so he leapt from the tree into a void, and fell freely for a moment, air rushing passed pinned ears, before reaching out to snag a branch, swinging via various vegetation to the ground. Buck started running. He wasn't sure where to but he suspected it was going to be someplace cold.

**A/N: Hopefully this will be the only dive into the insanity of Buck's mind for a while. Please excuse the melodrama. **


	2. Blind Spot

**Ch. 2: Blind Spot**

He was tired by the time he'd come up against the cave wall. Night was complete now, and no matter how fast he sprinted he still felt a vague, crawling fear chasing him, clinging to his hide like the dewdrops he was collecting as he blew through the leaves. Buck rarely allowed himself to run through the jungle full tilt, to say the least at _night_, he knew it was dangerous, but he didn't care, he didn't care.

He hit the edge of the cave with both paws as he was forced to stop running. _What am I doing here?_ He was looking for something, a memory was tugging at his inner compass… a darn faint memory, the bugger was making things hard. The rock was cool under paw, and cleaved in sharp angles. It smelled like _secrets passed through the muddy lips of bugs and bogs and hollow bones_.

"Our shadows hit these arcane crypts," he muttered to himself, and turned left, working his way down the wall and investigating every crack and niche. "And sleep there as that heavy hand shifts its sway upon the land…" It had to be here. Whatever it was. Reaching up, he found a paw-hold in the rock and started climbing. The rocks were sharp and he proceeded carefully, daintily.

"It's blinding fingers squeeze and break those souls who find themselves awake…" His voice did not echo or reverberate; it beat dully around the bubble of space he occupied, ringing in his ears. "Whose voices breathe a mournful quake…"

He paused in his climbing. He considered his words.

"Well that's not very cheerful," he said, and kept going. Glancing back down, he realized that if he were to fall he'd be filleted like a fish by the sharp rocks before he hit the ground. Untroubled, he started inching to the side now, poking in the dark with his knife, looking for –

His knife prodded empty space.

With a small sense of victory, and not a small amount of wonder (how had he not known this was here, all this time?) he found the edges to the hole in the rock face, and slithered inside. The stone in there was smooth and worn, telling him that this had been an old underground river chute. With any luck, it would lead him to the surface.

"The surface?" he asked, hesitatingly.

"Yes, the surface, that's where we're going," he replied conversationally. "_BAH!" _he called sharply, and pricked his ears to pick up the echo. It came back slowly and leisurely. This was a nice big water chute. Large predators probably lurked around in here, in fact. Maybe he should sleep now and continue on in the daylight.

"No, no," he said immediately. The thought of sitting still down here, with that… feeling clinging to him – yes, it was still there, he noticed with a grimace – sent chills through his body. Besides, it'd be dark in the cave anyways. _Alright then,_ he thought, and started walking, feeling his way along the wall. His usually fantastic night vision was being challenged now. He hoped he wasn't about to get lost forever in a series of labyrinthine caves. It wasn't as if he knew where he was going, he'd never been here before.

Or had he?

Maybe this was where he'd passed, years ago, when he'd come down from the surface. That made sense. He didn't remember much from back then, but he supposed he'd had to have gotten down here somehow or another.

_Behind you!_

He whirled around, fangs bared, knife upheld. He could see nothing, hear nothing, smell nothing but ancient stone. His eye darted and strained wildly, ears swiveling. Unmoving, he listened in complete sensory silence for long moments before determining that his nerves had pulled a fast one on him. His heart slowed down a bit in his ribcage, and that awful feeling was saturating his hide, seeping into his muscles now, pushing into his ears –

He shook himself desperately, started moving again, faster. It was like gangrene. You kept hoping it would go away, but each time you looked at it it was worse. Kind of like bad hair. Not that he'd ever had either. He had the wild hope that if he could just get to the surface, maybe find that odd and friendly herd, he'd be ok. Or something. That was the plan, such as it was.

Time slipped by like currents under a river covered in overgrown lily-pads. Buck pushed up the chute, sometimes climbing, sometimes stumbling, but he never stopped after that. Even if he was sure he heard something. He would not turn around to listen, too afraid to confront whatever was behind him.

"Nah, I'm just in a hurry. I'm a busy weasel. I have places to be." He grimaced as his voice echoed a bit down the tunnel, and picked up his already considerable pace. He wondered that he wasn't running smack into walls.

Was that a bit of light up ahead? Yes, it was. He could make out the outlines of the tunnel! Faster now, almost smiling again – _the surface, after all this time –_ and the glow was growing, the chute was twisting this way and that way, more light after each bend.

"Woa, old chap," he told himself, and slowed a bit. That was a _lot_ of light. Was it daytime already? His perception of time must be quite skewed. If he went bursting out into the open, he wouldn't be able to see much at first, and who knew what would come along and try to eat him while he was temporarily incapacitated?

That feeling, lurking behind him, stabbed the back of his neck. Sharp intake of breath, his heart leapt in fright – when was the last time _that _had happened? – and he was running away from whatever it was, paw aching for clutching the knife so tightly, away blindly, even though he could now see. Something snapped at his heals and he knew if it got him he'd be a goner, without a doubt –

Around a bend and suddenly the light was too bright. He'd been expecting a bit of visual trouble, but the complete blackness he'd been experiencing was now replaced with complete –

_Whiteness! _

His mind reeled, his legs collapsed, eye blinking wildly and then shutting against the terrible white. Whatever he was cowering against was cold and wet and also glowing with pallid light and fleetingly he wanted to turn around and dive back into the cave, but _something was waiting for him down there_, he wouldn't…

He gritted his teeth. Now was not the time to be a sissy.


	3. Loomings

**A/N: Celeste38, CurrentlyMe, and Hohosexuality (a most intriguing name), thanks for your comments! I'm glad that other Buck-fans are enjoying this. As for you, 'Me', Buck would not approve of your demise if this story happened to end prematurely, so we'll try to keep up to the end.**

**Ch. 3: Loomings**

"You're being ridiculous, Buckminster. You're not afraid of the dark and you're certainly not afraid of the white – I mean light – so just take a deep breath…" Buck took a deep breath, as advised, and let it out. "There now, doesn't that feel better. Right. Enough of this sniveling slinky snaky stuff. I am not," he stated, "A cockroach."

He got up and peered around.

"Never _said_ I was a cockroach…" he muttered.

"Aye, but you were _thinking _it."

"True enough," he replied sadly.

It was still terribly bright out. But, as he'd known would happen eventually, his eye was beginning to adjust. The terror of a few moments ago was only a memory, an event sinking into the murky depths of a swamp he kept in his mind. He only put stuff there when he never wanted to see it again. Sometimes he worried that the swamp would suddenly explode and send unwelcome thoughts and things out into the open for him to see, but he always just pushed that worry into the swamp as well.

The cold, wet stuff was something he'd seen before, he was sure of it. Made of tiny ice crystals, it was, they were called… why, they were called 'snowflakes'. Snowflakes were white, just like Rudy. So this must be snow.

Well, it was a darn hindrance. Easy to track in, sure, but he was a good tracker. He didn't need footprints a baby sloth could follow. And now he had to worry about his own tracks. Back down in the cave he'd been used to moving without leaving a trace. Perhaps he could dig _under_ the snow… no, he decided. Then he wouldn't see who was coming. Besides, this stuff was really, really cold.

"Wait a tick…" The landscape was becoming a bit more clear, and it wasn't much different than when he'd been completely snow-blind. Everything was still white. Well, most of the rocks weren't. The trees weren't. The sky was a dazzling whitish blue (what was that orb? Was that the _sun?)_. But everything else was snow. He'd be able to see and hear a predator coming before it knew he was even there. When he thought about it, he figured he couldn't have _that_ much to worry about, if Sid the Sloth could survive this place.

That final thought sent his spirits a little higher, and he set off walking away from the sun, which was much too bright to look at, and this way he could see the shadow of whoever tried to creep up on him. He tried walking through the snow and found that it was far too much work to push through the stuff – it was up to his middle – and so he settled for hopping through it on all fours, which suited him just fine. Actually it made him quite happy, and if it weren't for the fact that his paws were cold and he had no idea where he was going or why, really, he was up there in the first place, he may just have started to downright frolic.

He was approaching a rocky valley now, and as he got to the edge he saw it swept down into a gorge sprayed with conifers, which lined a river that looked absolutely frigid. Nonetheless, a small group of mammals stood at the waterline, with a few of the younger-looking beasts splashing in the water. They were grey beasts, awkward and gangly. Didn't look dangerous. Hoping they'd know the whereabouts of his favorite tusked friends, he made his way down the snowfield and soon approached one of the animals; a younger, friendly-looking one.

"Excuse me!" he called, and the animal looked around for the voice. "Over here, friend. Hello," he said amiably as the animal found him. Her eyes immediately narrowed. Maybe she hadn't been the best of choices after all. He continued, trying to act as harmless as possible. "Sorry to interrupt your morning, miss, but I was wondering if you knew the whereabouts of Manny, Ellie, Peaches," he ticked the names off on his paws, "Diego, Sid, and, ah, a crazy little Scrat with an acorn and sometimes the lovely Scratte."

"Why?" Her eyes were even more narrow now, and aimed at his knife. There was nowhere he could hide it. His face started to fall.

"Oh, I'm a friend. Thought I'd pop in for a visit. But if you don't know, that's fine. Thanks anyways."

"We know where Manny lives!" squeaked another voice, and a small grey beast stuck its smiling face out from behind the female, its mother. The mother looked positively appalled.

"Do you now?" Buck asked.

"Yeah, down this valley around the next bend and up in the giant stand of spruce! He's got the best playground." The kid looked delighted to be of service, and Buck gave him a grateful 'thanks mate' and salute, trying not to notice the mother's infuriated glare. His attention was being poked by the fact that more than two of these animals were now staring at him. In fact he'd venture to guess six or seven had stopped what they were doing to look on, and more by the second. Not unusual, he supposed, but it still made his skin crawl. He wondered if they treated _all_ the strangers they encountered with such coldness. One last wave to the pair he'd talked with, and off he went down the valley, on his way to giving the herd a very wide berth.

"What happened to your eye, mister?"

It was the kid. His mother shushed him. Buck's paw flew to his right eye. The patch! He'd forgotten to replace it after it'd been blown away! Heavens, he was walking around with… _something_ horrific showing. He himself didn't even know what it looked like, he'd never had the desire to look at his own reflection. He half turned, stumbling on words in his head.

"Aye, the eye. It… well, it…" He sighed, as if in resignation. "I didn't eat my broccoli and it fell out." The kid's eyes widened.

"What's broccoli?"

"You don't know what broccoli is? Well I'll be a bottle brush. What kind of world is-"

"Buck?"

Buck's wonder over the kid's lack of vegetable knowledge froze. He turned and stared at the grizzled-looking beast who'd said his name. Its knees were knobby and its eyes… reminded Buck of Rudy's eyes. Old and watery. And it was sneering. All of Buck's courage and pluck started backing down and… and that chill was coming back, the one he thought he'd left down in the caves with the darkness.

"How did… how do you know my name?"

No answer was forthcoming. The elder glared at him haughtily and it was clear that he would say no more. Buck's eye traveled around the rest of the herd. It seemed that all the older ones were staring at him in shock or hatred and even recognition, and the children looked clueless, as children are prone to look.

"What's going on?" he asked. This was making him supremely nervous. Not in an oh-no-I'm-about-to-get-eaten way, but in a surreal, dreamy, awful way that made him feel ill. They recognized him, they knew his name, and they hated him. What –

_What have you done?_

"I haven't done anything," he whispered. But he didn't remember. He didn't remember the surface, or why he'd gone down to the ancient, hidden world, but surely, surely he hadn't…

His eye landed fearfully back on the elder, and for being such a funny-looking creature, this guy sure packed a punch when he threw his gaze around. Buck opened his mouth to politely inquire as to what, exactly, was going on, but he couldn't speak. They weren't going to tell him anything, they were just going to stand there and glare at him, watch him squirm, push at him with their narrow, sharp, piercing, fiery, probing, hating, stabbing eyes.

Buck fled.


	4. Big Happy Reunion

**A/N: CurrentlyMe, you seem to be picking up some crime-solving tips from everyone's favorite weasel. This could be a problem if you go into crime scene investigation. Thought I'd warn you. I'm happy you picked up on Buck's weird memory inconsistencies, that may become important! Thanks for the continued support!**

**SimbaFan, thank you for the wonderful, heart-warming review, it makes my soul feel happy. I'm glad you think I'm doing Buck some sort of justice! **

**Ch. 4: Big Happy Reunion**

Peaches was in the process of learning physics the hard way. Ellie had tried to tell her that you just can't build a snow fort _on top of_ a tree, but Peaches was under the impression that if she used water to make ice (a trick she'd picked up from her dad quickly) she'd be able to build a bubble-residence on a low branch.

Ellie stood close by, waiting for it to crumble. Her daughter had assembled a shallow ice nest, but it was getting to the breaking point. Peaches was going to be stubborn, she could tell already, but that was good. She'd grow up to be strong.

Sid was fussing with a snow sculpture nearby, and she had no idea what he was trying to create. He'd been a good uncle. A stupid one, but what could they expect? Manny was off with Diego and the two possums, doing something manly, no doubt, which left Ellie to look after Peaches and Sid.

Honestly, sometimes she didn't understand why Sid survived long enough to meet Manny.

Peaches was now clambering up the ladder structure Sid and Diego (mostly Diego) had built for her, water in tiny trunk ready to spray it over her newly-placed snow. Ellie reached out her trunk protectively, just in case, and –

Something was coming. Bushes, sticks, a _crnch crnch crnch_ of snow being punched. It didn't sound big, and it wasn't heading straight for them, but one never knew.

"Peaches, hold on a minute, sweetie," she said quietly, stopping her daughter from advancing onto the branch. "Sid, hear that?"

"Hear what?" The sloth stopped what he was doing and let a blank look take over his face. An 'O' of acknowledgement formed on his mouth, and he nodded, coming closer to Ellie. They stared at where the noise would emerge, over at the other end of the playground. Maybe it was that nutty squirrel. No, it was bigger. And not as skittery. It was moving fast, rushing somewhere. Rushing _here_. She stepped closer to the tree that held her daughter and narrowed her eyes. Here it was…

It bounded over a rock and hit the snow of the enclosure, saw them, and froze. Its fur was shot all on end along its whippy body and its thin chest rose and fell rapidly, mouth hanging open a bit to reveal wicked teeth set in a problematic-looking underbite. One of its eyes gleamed over at them with alarm, and the other... wasn't quite right…

"Buck!" cried Sid happily, and shambled over to the creature. A wave of relief hit Ellie as she realized that it was not some deranged rabid weasel come to eat her child. It was only a deranged weasel. The sense of danger was gone immediately, but it was replaced with a strange sense that something wasn't right. Sid stopped a few feet from Buck.

"My favorite weasely weasel, it's been too long, man! What brings you up here to my realm?"

Buck's shoulders slumped as he let out a giant breath, and his left eye lost its mad gleam. He stared at Sid, and then Ellie, in relieved disbelief.

"Buck, buddy, you alright? You look – Woa!" Sid did a double-take and scrambled back a step as he caught sight of Buck's patchless eye. "What happened?"

Ellie ushered Peaches down from the tree, and then hurried to where Sid stared uncertainly at Buck, who was still trying to catch his breath.

"Buck, what's wrong?" she asked. Her bones were humming. If Buck looked this bad, this scared, something must be terribly, terribly wrong. She'd never expected to see the weasel look like this.

"I… I, ah…" he wheezed between gasps. "I just…" He gave up and shook his head. Peaches had pushed forward and now stared at the weasel with wide, wondering eyes. Ellie half wondered if her daughter should be seeing the remains of Buck's right eye, gruesome as it was, but Peaches smiled.

"Buck!" she chirped, stepping forward and pointing with her trunk at his knife, clutched in his paw. Ellie tugged Peaches back, away from the knife – instinct, she couldn't help it.

"Yes, honey, this is Buck! Um, Sid, would you take Peaches…" Sid nodded, and cast one more alarmed look at their friend before leading the young mammoth away.

"Buck." Ellie knelt, putting her face closer to his level. He fixed a mournful gaze on her and she couldn't help but grimace a bit – that _eye_, it sat cringing and milky behind a twisted eyelid, hunkered into the socket like a pale, withered spider shrinking from daylight.

"That bad, is it?" he sighed, and his voice rattled a bit. He was shivering, his paws drawn to his chest in stiff fists.

Ellie curled her trunk around his torso and lifted him over her shoulder, set him down on the furry ruff above her shoulders. "We're getting you some shelter," she proclaimed, and his tightened grip on her fur was the only response she got. She worried for the dozen or so yards it took to get to the shallow cave that served as their shelter. Mothers have an uncanny ability to enter a warp-speed worry vortex, and now she worried about, one, Buck's well-being. Obviously he was not ok. She worried about why he was here – had Rudy escaped into this world? Was Buck being chased by a pack of angry carnivores? Was he bringing something terrible down on their heads? Shouldn't Manny and the others be back by now? What if they needed protection? And if Buck had known he was coming up here he would have been prepared for the cold, but clearly he was not prepared, and that, coupled with the lack of an eye-patch, made her worry. What was going on? Did she need to worry about Peaches? What if they had to move? Would Peaches be able to handle traveling yet? Where _was _Peaches? Where was Sid?

She paused and turned around, and saw that Sid and Peaches were following. He was silent, for once, and even Peaches looked worried, which was quite a foreign thing for Ellie to see. Peaches hadn't had much opportunity to see her parents worried, other than the day of her birth.

The cave finally loomed up before them and she entered gratefully, wondering where to deposit the weasel. They didn't have any fires, the mammoths didn't need bedding, the possums slept on a branch, Sid slept on a rock, Diego used the rocky ground as well…

"Sid," she asked, "Go get Manny and the others."

"Yesh ma'am," he replied, and left the cave. Peaches gazed up into her mother's eyes, curious.

"Buck?" she asked, her clear, high voice producing a crisp echo. Buck didn't reply. Dread pushed into Ellie's mind and she lifted her trunk up, over to the beast on her shoulders. "Buck is resting, honey," she replied to her daughter with a gentle smile, whilst tapping Buck uneasily, wishing he'd say something, or at least move. She felt two paws grasp at the end of her trunk weakly, and then a voice was speaking into it.

"I'm sorry, Ellie," he whispered passively. "This was dreadfully unglamorous of me."

**A/N: Had some paragraphical difficulties with this one. Sorry about that.**


	5. Vanishing Act

**A/N:** **A warning: This may be based on a happy Blue Sky Studios movie (thank you, SimbaFan and Perxio), but this chapter gets violent. Not to mention a lot longer than I'd intended. Thanks for the reviews!**

**Ch. 5: Vanishing Act**

Buck had fallen silent again after his apology and Ellie wasn't going to push him. She was going to sit tight and hold down the fort until the others got back, and absently entertain Peaches. Really, she thought, _Buck_ should be entertaining Peaches, at least under normal circumstances. The two had never really met before but Peaches was well acquainted with the entity of the weasel, thanks to the likeness on the ice mobile and the plethora of stories she'd heard about her birth. The little mammoth was blissfully unaware of her mother's worry, as well as the whereabouts of Buck, as Ellie was doing her best to hide both. She rolled a large pinecone across the floor of the cave to her daughter, and Peaches attempted to intercept it, then rolled it back.

Ellie felt movement on her shoulders. Buck was crawling carefully up her neck, and now rested his elbows on the top of her head bump. Peaches, having retrieved the pinecone, got ready to roll it over, and caught sight of the weasel. Her eyes widened into a delightful smile and she giggled.

"Hello, gorgeous," came Buck's voice. Peaches attempted to toss him the pinecone, but it fell short and Ellie caught it deftly before once again rolling it back. "Your daughter is beautiful," he said quietly, and Ellie felt some of her worry fade away. Whatever had gotten Buck all in a knot had released him a bit, at least for now. He sounded, if a bit less enthusiastic than usual, rather normal. She figured if he wanted to say something about what had happened he'd say it in his own time. If herself and the others were in danger somehow he would have told her right away.

"And it's all thanks to you, Buckminster."

"What, that your daughter is gorgeous? I mean I know I'm handsome, but I don't think good looks are contagious. I think it's more of a genetics thing." She just laughed. Catching the laughter, her daughter looked back up to Buck.

"Buck, are you going to stay with us?" The hope in her lisping words (she'd picked up a tiny amount of Sid's lisp – Ellie was working to purge that) and in her huge eyes was evident. It was a good question, and Ellie waited with her daughter for a response.

"Stay with you… Oh, I don't know, I… I'll have to talk with your parents about that one." _Ah_, thought Ellie, _So he does have something to tell us_.

"You can help me build snow forts!" Peaches exclaimed, and Buck chuckled half-heartedly. "Please, Mom, can he stay?"

"We'll talk about it later, sweetie." Her daughter regarded her with a slyly hopeful look before pouncing on the pinecone. Ellie strained her eyes upwards, where she could see the ends of three weasel-claws, looking decidedly less unfrozen. "You know you're welcome to stay with us," she told him quietly. He sighed.

"Thanks, mum, but it's… I don't know, it's complicated. Say!" He slithered down her forehead on his belly and his head hung, upsidown, in front of her eyes. One of his paws covered his sightless eye, for which she was secretly thankful. He had the look of someone that was about to ask if they smelled bad. "Ellie," he whispered secretively, "is my eye still in there?"

"Uh, yes. Yeah, it's in there."

"Oh bugger," he said, looking alarmingly disappointed. "I lied to them. And to you!" He retreated back to the top of her head.

"What?" she asked.

"Well I told them it fell out. And I told you guys… let's see, I said '_I may have lost an eye that day'. _ I guess not, then."

"Wait, who? You told who that it fell out?"

"Those funny grey creatures, look like gangly hippopotamuses. I ran into a herd of them on the way up here. Asked what happened to my eye and I told them it fell out because I didn't eat my broccoli. Maybe that's why they were so mad at me, they could tell I was lying."

"They were _mad_ at you?" Ellie knew which herd he was talking about, and what he'd said about them sounded uncharacteristic.

"Oh yes, they…" He paused, and when he started speaking again most of the life had drained from his voice. "They looked quite mad. Funny, they knew who I was, they knew my name."

"But you've never met them?"

"I don't know, Ellie. I can't remember. It was the strangest thing." He went silent for a moment. Ellie turned to look outside, anxious for the rest of the herd to return. She was surprised to see that it had clouded over quite rapidly, and a few snowflakes were falling. The sound of the pinecone scraping against the stone ground took over for their conversation before Buck continued. "I suppose there aren't any leafy greens up here?"

"No, why?"

"I should probably be acquiring a new patch…what about shells, you got any of those lying around?"

"Not since the ice moved in."

"Bugger. I'll have to get creative- Hey!" Peaches had somehow managed to lug the pinecone all the way up there. "Why, it's a wily one that'd dare attack Buck, little lady. But I must say, good aim." He picked up the pinecone and gently tossed it to her. She reached out to catch it and had it for a split second before dropping it. "You'll get it yet, luv. Here, toss me that thing again. And don't hit your mother's face." She did so, and Buck proceeded to attempt to educate her on the finer points of the game 'catch'. Peaches seemed positively enthralled, but that may have been simply because Buck was there.

"You're her idol, you know," Ellie stated, as he finished a statement about aerodynamics.

"What? Thought that position was supposed to be occupied by parents. Not that I'm, you know, complaining." He tossed the pinecone gently to Peaches, who dropped it.

"Oh, you know what I mean. She's heard all about you. You're her hero. Sometimes," she chuckled, "she plays 'Buck'."

"What?" he asked again, and leaned over, fixing her with an incredulous eye.

"Yeah, she makes big snow monsters that she calls Rudy and knocks them down with sticks." Buck grimaced. "She saves Crash and Eddie from all kinds of danger. She's quite the little heroine herself."

"Is she now…" Buck looked, much to Ellie's surprise, troubled at the news, and retreated back to the thick tuft of hair atop her head. He seemed to be swinging wildly between two moods; almost bubbly contentedness and restless despair. Peaches aimed the pinecone and tossed it to the weasel, who was apparently caught unawares. "You've got it out for me ear, don't you? I need that, you know," said Buck. "Rule number one in the fine art of playing catch: always make eye contact with your partner _before _you throw the object. Ready?" He tossed it, and to Ellie's surprise and pride, Peaches caught it. "There, see, you're a natural."

Buck started telling a story to Peaches. It was about Eddie, and how he'd 'gone out on a limb, as it were,' to snag some ammo, and together with Crash he'd saved Buck's life by firing the fruits at the pursuing winged menaces. Peaches was fascinated, but Ellie was apprehensive. It was apparent that Buck was uneasy about being Peaches' idol. He hadn't had a problem being Crash and Eddie's idol. What was different?

The snow was falling harder now. She'd seen this many, many times before. This wasn't going to peter off into nothing; snow was going to start flying, and soon it'd be impossible to see the other side of the valley. She wasn't worried much about Manny and the others, but the timing sure was unfortunate. She started to wonder about why the herd down the valley had been mad at Buck, and why they'd known his name, when a familiar pear-shaped beast emerged from outside.

"Hey, Ellie," said Sid, brushing snow off his eyebrows, and smiled. "Oh, good. Buck's not dead yet." Buck threw the pinecone at him and Sid caught it. The sloth turned to Ellie again. "They went down the wash, I guess. Lost their tracks, couldn't find them."

"I'm sure they'll be back soon. Thanks for checking, Sid."

"Hey, anytime. That's what I'm here for. I'm the sloth for any mission, message, or massage. Especially the latter. So, Buck, what brings you up from the jungle of death and abyss of toxic fumes and platters of gosh?"

"That's the Plates of Woa, Chasm of Death, and Jungle of Misery to you, my favorite floppy green thing. I came up here because the sun was rising and I was covered in dew."

"Aw, Buck, I didn't know you were a poet," gushed Sid. "Did you write that yourself?"

"I don't know how to write. Do you know how to write?"

"No, but I can draw."

"Close enough."

"So you drew those lines yourself?"

"Yes. That's what I did."

"Wow, I wish _I_ could draw poetry."

"Sid, you are such an idiot," Buck said fondly.

"How are you feeling now, Buck?" Ellie asked, still a bit at a loss for words about the 'poetry' Buck had spouted. It wasn't that it was particularly inspired, it just made her wonder where he pulled his words from.

"I'm fine," he replied, rather quickly. "I suppose I'm a bit famished."

"Oh, well we have a food stash!" said Sid happily, and walked over to a flat rock. He pushed it aside with a mighty grunt to reveal a deep hollow full of food. "We have these nuts from last summer, if you want to call it that. Dried berries of three varieties. A bunch of needles. Here's Crash and Eddie's stash of bugs… ugh… they probably wouldn't mind if you had a go at them, although I wouldn't recommend it, personally. Some other vegetative stuff… So yeah. What'll it be? What do rodents eat?"

"_Rodent_?" said Buck indignantly. "Do I look like a rodent to you? Rodents don't have pointy teeth! They don't have furry tails, either, unless they've gone and dragged it through something wet and then frisked a molting musk ox."

"Haha, I've frisked a musk ox before. Not a good idea. Wait, you're not a rodent? Then…" Sid's accusatory curiosity melted a bit, and his eyes got caught on something at the entrance of the cave. "Then what are…" he tried to finish, but clearly his attention had completely shifted. Ellie felt Buck go tense as she turned to the cave front, and saw a shadow slouching in from the snow. It looked like Diego, and for a fleeting moment, she was so sure that it was him, sure that Manny and the two possums would emerge behind him from the curtain of snow. In fact, more figures did emerge, but they looked like the first one.

They were sabers.

Ellie's nerves were plunged into icy fright as she got to her feet and hastened to Peaches, who had forgotten about the pinecone by now. Sabers, here? There weren't any sabers in this area, that was one of the reasons they'd chosen it. Buck was gripping a pawful of her fur tightly, and Sid still hadn't moved.

"Uh… hello, there, friends," he said, tripping over his tongue a bit. "Can we…"

They'd started to advance into the cave, lips drawn back into snarls, eyes smoldering darkly behind narrowed eyebrows.

They were going after Peaches. Ellie knew it.

"Don't even try it," she snarled, lowering her tusks and bracing herself. They were so not going to get through her. Peaches cowered in the corner, and Sid slid back behind Ellie to stand by the little mammoth. A weight lifted from Ellie's shoulders and Buck hit the ground in front of her, knife raised, fur spiked. She felt a sudden thankfulness that Buck had come to them; he'd saved their lives so many times already, surely he could do it again! His ears were flattened to his skull and to Ellie's satisfaction, all three of the sabers shifted their gaze to him, and all three looked suddenly a bit apprehensive.

Their eyes didn't leave him. That seemed odd.

The one to the left sprang like a taught cord and Buck was no longer there. He reappeared behind the tiger, jumped atop its back and swung back his arm for a blow with the butt of the knife when a second tiger aimed a powerful swipe at Buck's head – missed, but sent him off-balance – and the third beast dove over the first one, like some arcane circus act, pinned Buck to the ground with claws straining with wiry tendons.

The weasel let out a bark of pain and smacked the saber in the side of the head with the knife. Claws retracted, tiger flinched, Buck slipped out like liquid, gasped as fangs snapped at his back, flipped around and the knife slashed and sunk into the side of one of the great cats, who made the cave reverberate with an infuriated roar before lunging, missing, Buck had already started assaulting the remaining unwounded saber –

But the two wounded ones weren't down, and why in the world weren't they attacking _her_ instead? She was the biggest obstacle in front of Peaches. Not wanting to leave her post in front of her daughter but wanting desperately to help her friend, Ellie tried to reach the fight with her trunk or tusks, but it was rapidly moving away from them, towards the exit.

No matter how amazing Buck was, Ellie realized, when it came to up-front combat with another quick, intelligent mammal, the odds were against him when faced with the numbers he was. It was simple math. The sabers were bigger and stronger.

"Manny!" she called desperately – maybe they were just around the corner – and took a hesitant step forward. But she could go no further. It would be so easy for one of the sabers to break away from the fight, bound around her like lightning and get at Peaches! The thought pushed her back into the corner and she watched helplessly, feeling sick. Where was Manny? Where in the world was Diego?

Buck cried out sharply and Ellie struggled to see what was going on on the other side of the cave, that flurry of fur and muscle. Buck managed to break away for a moment, chest heaving, spots of pink starting to leach into pale fur, the whiteness of the knife marred by dark blood. Two sabers came at the same time and he leapt into the air as only weasels can do, confusing the cats and landing unexpectedly to their right, bounded into the face of the third waiting cat, his knife disappearing under fur before he was forced to jerk back – two sets of claws dragging down his back –

The look of concentration on Buck's face disappeared and Ellie was shocked to see anger burning in his eye. Quicker than she could see, his teeth were buried in the fur of one of the tiger's necks, three sets of claws attached to the beast's sides and a knife plunged between the shoulder blades.

Ellie realized with alarm that she was almost more afraid of Buck at that moment than she was of the tigers. The tiger snarled, sunk low, and Buck jerked his head and knife-paw savagely. Another saber smashed into him and the weasel met him with a furious growl, knife flying. The saber stopped short, unable to dislodge Buck from his face with his claws, and the third tiger glanced in Ellie's direction, roared, shot across the cave, lunged, and she cried out in shock as its weight hit her full-on and hung there, saber teeth flashing dimly and she tried to shake it off, tried to pry it off with her trunk, but it wouldn't let go.

"Buck," he yelled into her face, "Stop fighting or I'll kill her!" She couldn't see what was happening, only the tiger in front of her and his terrible teeth, his snarling lips and then his eyes widened. Claws retracted and he fell to the ground, knife protruding from the back of his neck. Buck materialized at her feet and yanked the knife out of the beast, turned to face the two that now kept a distance. The one that had attacked her did not move. She could feel blood on her face, under and between her eyes, but she gave the cats her best insane-mother glare. One of them looked too wounded to attack again, but the other, though bloody and torn, looked a bit insane himself. He faced the cave entrance and let out a roar, then proceeded to pace. He could only have been calling more in to help. In the lull, Ellie tried to register what the saber had yelled at Buck. It didn't seem to match what she'd have thought he would yell if he'd been trying to get at Peaches.

"Buck," snarled the saber, jerking her from her thoughts, "This is simple. Come with us and we'll leave the mammoths alone." Just as she'd thought, shadows appeared out of the snow and quickly became four more tigers. _Manny, where _are_ you?_ _We need help!_ And what had he just said? Had he just said he only wanted Buck?

"We won't hurt you if you come now without a fight." Or so they said. Buck hadn't melted from his fighting position, and now he spoke, voice sounding slightly mangled.

"How do I know you'll leave them alone?"

"Buck!" Ellie exclaimed, appalled that he was considering their deal.

"Because if you _don't_, we'll kill them."

Buck didn't reply, trying to control his breathing, as well as the bleeding of a gash on his forehead that he'd slapped a paw across. The five standing tigers shifted restlessly and slunk low to the ground, growling. Ellie's mind raced, stretched between her daughter and her friend, sick dread settled around her heart.

A roar erupted from outside, and it made all the tigers in the cave glance over their shoulders. Ellie knew that roar, and it sparked relief and hope – it was Diego, they'd finally come back! Sounds of fighting erupted outside and she could only assume there were more of the sabers lurking out there.

"Ellie!" came Manny's voice, and they were back, finally, finally, the great mammoth was obscuring half the cave entrance and woe betide the tigers closest to his tusks. Two little animals jumped from the ivory weapons and scrambled, unnoticed, up to Ellie, clung to her fur. She could vaguely make out a tangle of bodies outside, Diego was throwing another form into the snow, lunging. Buck sprung silently and –

All the tigers in the cave snapped to action and Ellie could not for the life of her follow what happened in the next few seconds. Manny obscured everything for half of it and the rest of the time was such an explosion of fur and snow and sabers that she couldn't tell who was who, and abruptly all the chaos left, leaving Manny to hesitate at the entrance of the cave, watching the sabers retreat. Ellie could make out the outline of Diego standing out there, breathing deeply. After a moment, Manny rushed inside.

"They left, they're gone. Ellie, are you ok? Where's Peaches? You're bleeding. What happened, are you-"

"Behind me," she said, and cautiously shifted to reveal Peaches cowering in the corner, Sid's arms wrapped around her. "Tiger jumped on my face, but I'm fine, Buck threw his… his… Manny, where's Buck?"

"Where's Buck, what do you mean, he's… wait, he was… Diego, is Buck out there?"

"No, thought he was in there!"

Manny charged out into the snow and Diego bounded out of sight, both calling the weasel's name and neither getting an answer.

**A/N: Ride made **_**slightly**_** smoother by a pointer from SimbaFan, thanks!**


	6. Playing with Libra

**A/N: Thanks again for catching my mistakes, you people! Thanks for the reviews!**

**Ch. 6: Playing with Libra**

They'd made a snap decision and allowed Diego and Crash to track the retreating pack of sabers. The decision to let Crash go hadn't been easy for them, especially for Ellie, but it was only logical. Diego could continue tracking while Crash could report back. Letting Diego go hadn't been easy either, as the tiger hadn't come away from the fight unmarred; he was sure to develop impressive scars across his back.

Eddie was more than a little unstable at the moment. Ellie had never seen her brother so somber. Both his hero and his brother were in danger and he, like the rest of them, felt the restless need to do something useful.

"No," insisted Manny, "We need to hold down the home base. They won't attack again because they only wanted Buck. They have him, so we're safe. Once Diego and/or Crash get back and tell us what they're _doing_ with him, _then_ we can try and help." Manny was right, Ellie told herself. It was just so awkward, standing around and wondering. Not to mention knowing there were two dead sabers stiffening outside where Manny had dumped them.

Sid was attempting to keep Peaches occupied with the pinecone, which Ellie thought was admirable, but it was apparent that his nerves were getting in the way. His throws wouldn't fly straight and, naturally uncoordinated already, the pinecone would always slip through his considerable claws. Peaches knew something was wrong, and had asked where Buck was several times, but Ellie wasn't sure whether she should lie to her daughter or try to explain the truth, and as a result all Peaches had gotten so far was uneasy silence.

Manny asked Eddie to go be with Sid and Peaches, where he would at least be able to provide Peaches with a competent 'catch' partner, and then the mammoth gestured for Ellie to join him off to the side, and she did, keeping one eye out at the snow.

"How's your face?" he asked, concerned.

"Fine. Don't worry about me." A useless hope, of course. Manny sighed.

"Ellie, should we be doing this?"

"What do you mean? Doing what?"

"Should we really… you know, I mean, Peaches and everything, can we really afford to, like…"

"Manny, just say it," Ellie told him, although she thought she knew what he was trying to say. She'd been thinking about the same issue.

"Should we… be trying to… to save Buck. Aaah," he growled, frustrated. "He saved our lives like eighteen times down there, it doesn't feel right to say that." Ellie nodded, knowing what he meant. He continued. "But… we're a family now. They were willing to hurt _you_ to get at him, clearly they're not afraid to do whatever it takes. We just can't take this lightly, you know? We all love Buck but what are we willing to risk for him? Personally I don't feel comfortable risking the life of my wife and kids for…. for _anyone._" Manny had gotten onto his soap box now, and Ellie could tell he was as much talking to himself as he was to her. "I mean a family isn't just another herd, there are things that families have that they have to preserve! Above all else. And, you know, if he had a family waiting for him somewhere, maybe I'd feel different, but hedoesn't." Manny stopped talking and looked as if he were working on a complex math equation in his head.

_He does have a family. WE'RE his family,_ Ellie wanted to say.

But that wasn't really the truth. They may be the closest Buck had to a family, but it simply wasn't the same. She would always put Manny and Peaches before Buck.

"Manny, I know what you're saying. And it's good to know what you feel about this. But I don't think we can cut things off cold right now. We have to at least _find out_ why they want him, what's going on. Maybe there _will_ be something we can do for him. We have to wait for Crash and Diego to get back with news before we start making… hard decisions. That we might regret later." Manny bowed his head to the side, looking troubled. Sid and Eddie had stopped what they were doing and had been listening, and Peaches had fallen still and wide-eyed.

She wanted to say something, get everyone's spirits up. But she was just as worried as they were. If it came to it, and she was sure it would, they'd have to make a decision about whether they would allow themselves to be pulled into his problem. _Don't get ahead of yourself_, she thought. The only thing to do was to wait for news from their scouts.

:

-()()()()()-

:

Diego's back burned with each stride he took and he was grateful for the cool air that froze the blood to his fur. It didn't help that Crash was up there. The possum was doing his best not to hurt Diego further, and he hardly had a choice. Diego'd told him to save his energy in case he had to sprint back to the cave.

The tracks had been a mass of chaos as they led away from the cave. They were doubled over themselves, going back the way they'd come. None of the nine or ten sets of tracks had been going in quite a straight line on the way out, and Diego found weasel footprints dancing about the tracks of the cats for several meters. About the time Buck's prints disappeared was when the saber prints straightened out. They'd picked him up. This was also where they'd found the weasel's knife. Crash now cradled it reverently.

The snow was starting to fill in the trail and Diego hoped to high heavens that the tigers weren't going far with Buck. He wanted to keep up enough so the tracks didn't fade, but he certainly didn't want to get close enough for detection; that would probably result in their demise. But it was hard to judge just how far away they were, with the snow flying.

Fortunately he didn't have too much time to worry about that issue. He'd been going for half an hour when worrisome shadows appeared ahead of them. He stopped short and crouched, then crept to a grove of pine trees and advanced slowly.

Yes, those were the sabertooths. As he got even closer he could make out ten of them – hopefully that was all there were. Six of them were concentrated in one spot, and if they indeed had Buck, Diego assumed that's where the weasel was. Unless they'd eaten him. He pricked his ears and strained to hear what was being said, but there didn't appear to be much talking going on.

"Crash," Diego whispered at the bottom of his voice, "climb up this tree and see if you can tell what's going on."

Crash slid carefully off his back and deposited the knife regretfully before silently starting up the indicated tree. Diego waited as patiently as he could for long moments, one eye on the herd of predators and one up the tree on the possum. It was strange seeing Crash so silent, so careful. When he started coming down his face was distinctly more anxious. He took up the knife again protectively and cupped his paw to Diego's ear.

"He's alive," Crash reported, "but there's two sabers keeping him down. I think I saw another herd of something a little ways up, and there were cat tracks leading over to them." Diego's eyebrows dropped. What in the world was up? Before he'd left, Elllie had told him that Buck had met with a herd that had acted hostile towards him. Was this a connection?

"He didn't look very good, Diego," Crash said, and Diego gathered from the possum's tone that it may have been an understatement.

And now he was supposed to decide what to do. The plan had sounded easy enough at first –see what was going on, report back – but 'what was going on' couldn't be determined yet, not simply by watching.

"Go back up the tree," he told Crash, "and as soon as anything else happens that you think is important, come back down and tell me. I'm going further up there." He gestured up a slope that was wreathed in young conifers; plenty of cover, relatively comprehensive view, and further from what was happening, just in case the sabers wandered.

The fur on his back was starting to get stiff and tight, and he hoped he wouldn't have to sit hunkered there for long. And it certainly wasn't safe to linger, as he was leaving his own suspicious tracks in the snow now. Then again, whatever was going to happen more than likely wouldn't put a positive spin on the situation.

**A/N: I'm a bad person and didn't proof this! :( **


	7. Million Watt Cage

**Ch. 7: Million-Watt Cage**

Buck had been in Diego's mouth before. And it wasn't as if he'd just been draped gently between the big cat's jaws; Diego had hit him with 400 pounds of force whilst jumping through the air. Buck wasn't going to complain, since the brief time he'd spent jammed between teeth as big as his own toes (not counting the saber teeth) most definitely had saved his life.

When the tigers had finally parted him with his knife and given him a conclusive knock on the head, it hadn't rendered him unconscious, but he'd not been able to stop one of them from grabbing him up in its smelly maw. This was different from his first tiger-mouth experience for a number of reasons, the most important ones being that _this_ tiger was not Diego, and also that the ride wasn't a quick one; wherever they were going, they weren't getting there soon enough. With each stride the tiger took, Buck felt the teeth around his middle cram themselves a little further into his hide. If he struggled, the teeth clamped down harder. If he tried to ease the gravity-aided pressure by grabbing the tiger's snout, the bite would tighten. If he tried to make friendly conversation, the tiger would growl, which was terrible because its breath was bad enough without it sending another extra wash of it out into his fur. He'd told it as much, too.

His head was buzzing and his torso was on fire by the time the pack finally stopped, and the tiger mercifully dumped him onto a patch of ice. He landed on his side with a hiss, and was immediately pinned to the frozen ground by two tiger paws. This was, he thought bitterly, entirely unnecessary. He probably couldn't have gotten up if the tigers tried to _help_ him up. Which was highly improbable, said their claws.

A very blurry face sort of thing shoved itself into his view, and after focusing for a moment, it resolved itself to be a tiger. It was the ugliest feline visage he'd ever seen. Its ears seemed much too small, teeth crooked, nose torn down the middle. He tried to let the cat know, but his mouth had been disconnected from his brain, and an incomprehensible grumble escaped instead. The cat didn't look interested in what Buck was trying to say, though. To his surprise, it looked a mite concerned, the way one might look concerned over a piece of spoiling meat. It put its nose close to the weasel and sniffed, pushed away the claws that were holding him and rolled him over.

Buck snarled and got all four limbs under control, trying to stand. The ugly saber knocked him down easily and once again he found himself under the sway of two heavy paws. The cat straightened and started to speak, although Buck was having a bit of trouble concentrating on what was being said, as the ground seemed to be tipping into a more vertically-oriented plane of existence. Strangely, the sabers didn't seem to notice.

"… mammoth killed Bosch. We lost three," he was saying, when Buck realized a bout of vertigo was to blame for the tilting sensation. "They told us the weasel was no good at fighting, and they didn't mention he hung out with a mammoth and a tiger. I have a feeling we're getting the short end of the stick, boys." There were growls of agreement. Buck tried to gather his scattered wits enough to make sense of what was being said.

"I'm going over there to rearrange the conditions. Stay here, don't kill him, and keep an eye out for anyone trying to follow us."

"You got it."

The ugly one disappeared from Buck's sight. It was almost immediately replaced by another tiger face ornamented with a sneering smile. Its paw on his chest bore down cruelly and the snowy sky above him was plagued with sudden bright sparks of light and dark.

"Don't kill me," Buck reminded the cat with a gasp, pleased that his voice was once again working. The pressure lessened a bit, but the smile on the face above him flipped around and now the cat was frowning furiously.

"You killed two of our pack."

"Can you blame me?"

The tiger scoffed, and lifted its gaze to scan the valley. Buck sincerely hoped its eyes wouldn't catch on anything.

The pain that had stitched itself to his body was being numbed considerably by the ice below him, allowing his mind to combobulate itself. A ton of worries crashed slow-motion into his mind. Were Ellie and Peaches and the rest ok? Were they trying to save him? Where was he being taken? Whose package was he? Why did they want him, why had they thought he wouldn't fight back, why wasn't he dead yet, _what had he done?_

The last question swept all other worry out of the way for a moment, beating hollowly at his memories. Or lack thereof. Wasn't it entirely possible that he'd… _done _something in his past? Back in the cave, playing with Peaches, he'd decided that that may be the only logical explanation. Being an illogical weasel, he'd told himself that there must be another answer. He'd have remembered if he'd done something bad enough to get him captured upon his return to the surface.

Right?

He couldn't force away the preemptive guilt. He already felt terrible about whatever it was that he had or hadn't done. What had it been? Led an uprising that resulted in hundreds of deaths? Been a serial killer? Eaten babies? He grimaced. Maybe they had the wrong weasel. Then again, what were the chances of there being two weasels that looked identical, both named Buck? Slim. Probably negative four.

Maybe he actually deserved this.

That made no sense, though. Even if he had done something, clearly he'd since lost his mind (perhaps because of what he'd done) and become a completely different weasel. _Try telling _them_ that_, he told himself. Whoever 'them' was. These tigers, for instance.

"Say," he said to one of his captors, "do you know what I did?"

"What?"

"What I did, do you know? Why's everyone so mad at me?"

"You caused the death of three of our mates."

"Yes, yes, and I'm very sorry about that, but why'd you want me in the first place?" His curiosity earned him a swipe across the face, but a moment later the cat proceeded to answer, so it was worth it.

"Because we've got a deal with the hippo herd. We give them you, they give us food."

"But why do _they _want me?"

"Who knows? Who cares? Now shut up or I'll poke out your other eyeball." So maybe the swipe hadn't been worth it. Buck tried to sigh and found he couldn't draw enough breath to execute such a maneuver. He stared up into a sky framed by the tips of towering pines, finding it quite impossible to relax. A snowflake made a wild, whirling dash for his eyeball, and he blinked. Everything seemed to have it out for his eyes. The tiger, the snow, the blinding whiteness that this world presented, and Rudy… Rudy…

Was the dinosaur dead? Lying stiff in his cave? Or roaming free in the jungle, furiously searching for his lost tooth? That white tooth. Buck had lost it, he'd dropped the knife, how was he supposed to defend himself against all this terrible, creeping whiteness?

Something moved.

His eye darted to a pine top to the east. What _was_ that? Little shadow inching up the tree. Probably one of those squirrels. Well, no, it was bigger. Was that a…

Yes, it was. It was a possum. His friends hadn't abandoned him. Yet.

**A/N: I feel like this story is moving very slowly. I tend to have a problem with moving things along. Thoughts?**


	8. Family Matters

**A/N: Thanks to all about feedback on pace. Please never hesitate to criticize.**

**CurrentlyMe, I'll keep that in mind, thanks! That's sound advice. I get awful high-strung when it comes to writing fanfics. Thanks for your kind reviews! And totally can't wait for the last chapter of your story!**

**SimbaFan, thanks for another awesome review! This chapter **_**may**_** answer that question of yours, but really… it's not much of an answer. **

**Perxio – completely agree with you about that rumor. Bah. It wouldn't be Ice Age if it weren't IN the Ice Age! On a more positive note, your review made me smile widely and feel awesome, thanks so much! **

**Amethyst Dragonrider, Lina-Shan, IceAgeLover, and Pisces, thank you all for your reviews. Your feedback is greatly appreciated!**

**Ch. 8: Family Matters**

The big cat who had left to talk to the waiting herd returned quickly, his footsteps agitated.

"They want to see the weasel," he snarled, waking Buck from a daze. "I told them we'd only give him over if they upped their end of the deal, then they got all high and mighty and said they want to see him first. We don't need to make them more defensive than they already are by bringing all of us over. Tarang, Kashif, Yann, come with me. The rest of you stay here. Yann, grab the weasel."

"Be gentle with the weasel," Buck requested as yet another pair of jaws closed around him and lifted him up. To his utter surprise, the tiger's teeth were remarkably dull and were not biting down into his body; only manageable pain was forthcoming as he dangled from the jaws. Either this tiger was just old, weak, and unable to clamp down harder, or this tiger's heart was made of gold. Actually, neither seemed appropriate, as glancing down at the forelegs of the beast told Buck that his captor was nowhere near being a weakling (although its fur was grizzled and crossed with scars), and if its heart was made of gold it probably wouldn't be working with the rest of them to cause him to suffer.

Unless, he reminded himself, he _deserved _to suffer.

From his awkward, sideways angle, he tried to determine if the possum was still in the tree; before he'd started mentally drifting, he'd watched the possum go back down the tree, only to return a moment later. The pack of tigers would have seen Manny if the mammoth had gone too, and if Sid were here they would have smelled something. Perhaps Diego was hiding out somewhere.

As much as he wanted to escape, he didn't want them to try to rescue him. Well, he _wanted_ them to want to rescue him, but then they'd be in danger. Ideally he'd be able to escape himself, send word to his friends that he was ok, and go back down to the cave.

The cave?

And face Rudy again? If not Rudy, what awaited him down there? He didn't have much to return to. Besides, it was almost as dangerous down there as it was up here. He'd be hunted in both worlds for something he'd done, apparently. But at least in Rudy's case he understood what was gong on.

Who was he kidding, no he didn't. His obsession with Rudy seemed more mystifying than the reason he'd been met with such hostility up here. More mystifying and more acceptable. At least with Rudy there'd been a fair chance that he would survive.

The leader of their small group paced out in front, with Yann behind him a ways and Tarang and Kashif flanking Yann. Buck guessed that if he really tried, he might be able to pop out of Yann's mouth and make a break for it, get a few yards, then get tackled and chewed upon by those younger, pointier-looking tigers.

Never mind.

He tried to swivel to see ahead, get a peek at this herd he was being delivered to, but his body and Yann's teeth wouldn't let him twist that way. Resigning himself to stare at Yann's monstrous paws, he wondered if Yann was any more tolerant of one-sided conversation than the first tiger who had carried him from Manny's cave had been.

"So, Yann," he said, and wondered how to follow that up. "Ah… got any grandkids?"

Yann didn't answer, and kept loping along.

"Because, you know, you seem like you would have. Not that you look old or anything, it's just your teeth feel a bit duller than the other pair of jaws I was just in."

Somewhere down the valley a buzzard cawed loudly.

"If you're wondering if _I_ have grandkids, the answer's no, unfortunately. My wife was a pineapple. She was lovely, but, you know. You know how it goes with marrying a fruit."

Buck felt the mouth around him twist slightly into what could have been an annoyed snarl or an amused smirk.

"Well, maybe you _don't_ know. Just as well you stick to the mammal-type. You look like you have some valuable genes coursing through your veins. Fruits can be a bit prickly sometimes, too. The relationship is purely a psychological one, you know, it can get a bit tiresome hugging a pineapple, prickly as they are. She never hugged back and that was a bit discouraging. I got over it, though. We just had to learn each other's limits." The cat's hot breath had, he realized, completely thawed whatever blessed cold had been numbing his body. He felt exceptionally dirty now, covered in blood and spit and who knew what else, everything working its way into his wounds. If he wasn't about to be killed, surely he'd die of infection in a few days if he couldn't get cleaned up.

"I'm going to stop talking now, I'm feeling a bit sick. I'm sorry if I vomit in your mouth. Truly." With that, Yann actually snorted in amusement, which made Buck feel a little better in his head. He hadn't been lying when he'd said that he felt sick, though. Being carried around by the torso invited the kind of pain one gets when they get the wind knocked out of them violently, without having the wind actually knocked out. Speaking wasn't making anything feel better either.

Yann stopped moving, lowered his head, and let Buck roll out of his jaws. For a fleeting moment, Buck thought the cat had committed some blasphemous act of kindness upon hearing of his discomfort, and mercifully set him down, but then Yann set his paw across Buck's back, rendering him immobile. He looked ahead and there stood their group leader, Ugly Mug, stopped. Tarang and Kashif glowered behind them still. And a few meters ahead, a compact mass of animal. The snow had finally let up a bit and it was easy to see that it was a small part of the same herd he'd met on the way over to Manny's cave. The gangly hippos. The imperious elder who had given him the eye before had now stepped forward.

"Let's see the weasel," he declared, and Buck felt that he'd almost rather stay with the sabers. This hippo sounded slimy and pompous and the way he'd said 'the weasel' made Buck feel like a piece of merchandise. On the plus side, it didn't have sharp teeth or claws. It strutted forward, giving the cats an ill-concealed nervous glare, and stopped in front of Buck.

"Get your paw away," he said to Yann, peering at Buck, which felt extraordinarily awkward.

"If he gets away now it's your fault," said Ugly Mug. "You'd owe us what you promised and more." _What was promised?_ Buck wondered.

"We'll see about _that _in a moment." _Why did a moment even matter?_ The hippo cast its beady eyes across Buck's pelt – his fur started to spike again, against his will – and then ordered Yann to flip him over. That was about as much as he could take. Buck batted away the tiger's paw.

"Look, I'm not a carpet," he scowled to the hippo, and struggled to his feet. He threw his gaze briefly at Yann, hoping he wasn't about to get knocked down, and was a little surprised to see Yann's eyebrows raised mildly. As opposed to those of the hippo, which were narrowed and rumpled in anger, and perhaps, _maybe_, a hint of fear. Now that Buck stood, he was almost eye-level with the grey beast, and he wasn't standing to his full height. He supposed he looked a bit crazed, all covered in blood and his right eye lurking eerily.

The hippo took a few steps back and threw a look at Ugly Mug.

"So this little guy took down three of your crew?"

"Two. His friend the mammoth took out the third."

"His friend the mammoth…" The hippo advanced again and said to Buck, "So you're friends with Manny, are you?" Buck didn't reply, not knowing what that would result in. "So he must have met you when he and his posse took their little underground adventure. Tell me, Buck, does he know who you are? What you did?"

"_I_ don't even know! Why don't you tell me?" he exploded. The hippo's eyes widened, surprised. "I've lost my memory! I don't know who I am anymore, I don't _know_ what I did!" Murmurs started to ripple through the crowd of hippos in front of them and the hippo leader still looked taken aback. Ugly Mug simply looked confused. "And now," he continued, a bit less passionately, jabbing a finger at the hippo, "I've gone and lost it in front of an entire crowd, which happens to be _exceptionally_ embarrassing."

One of the hippos in back started to snicker, but besides that, all was blessedly silent for a moment. Buck's single eye desperately tried to trace the hippo's emotions, but all he could pick up was 'shock', then 'conniving', and finally 'malicious, spiteful hippo'. His ears fell in anticipation.

"You, Buck," said the hippo, advancing courageously, "are a murderer." Buck's breath caught in his throat, suddenly deciding he didn't want to hear this. The hippo continued, though, and Buck stood riveted to the spot. "When you were found out, you took your poor family and forced them into that damnable cave with you because you were afraid of the justice we would have exacted. Do you remember your family at all, or have you forgotten them too? You're a murderer, a coward, and you are alone." He punctuated his last four words with cruel infliction and their sharpness stabbed his sinking heart.

"Now that we've caught you up, let's get down to business. Tiger," he said, voice echoing without meaning through Buck's head, "I told you not to hurt him, and clearly you didn't follow my instructions, so I don't see why we should-"

Ugly Mug roared, causing the entirety of the hippos to jump.

"Look, hippo, _you _told us he wouldn't fight back, and you were wrong. _You _didn't mention he had friends that could fight. We lost _three_ of our members for this little weasel. And if I'm not mistaken, we could take every single one of you down right now if we wanted, _and _refuse to hand Buck over. I'm pretty sure we're holding all the cards. If I say we're demanding three of you instead of one, you'd better do it, and you'd better make it snappy."

_What?_ Buck's mind reeled as he tried to take everything in. His world had, as they say, turned upsidown. Everything had become genuinely surreal, including the fact that the hippo leader was apparently going to… _give_ the tigers three of their own to eat. No sense. It made no sense. He clung to the nonsense it made like he'd clung to Rudy's dangly-throat thing. He blew it up in his mind so it occupied every bit of processing room he had and he stared at it dumbly. Buck couldn't, he simply _could not_ think about-

"Fine, fine," replied the hippo hastily, eyeing Ugly Mug's sabers and massive paws. "Three. Fine. You'll get them when we drop the weasel off. We can do that, we've got enough fat, useless herd members to spare." He paused, and eyed the three tigers that had accompanied their leader. "These the three you're sending with us?" Ugly Mug nodded.

"Yann, Kashif, and Tarang. He hasn't got a chance of escaping those three."

_Three dead hippos, three dead tigers, three saber guards, three hops over the third plate and three white claws ripping my face – _

"We'll be following at a distance," declared Ugly Mug, and the hippo rolled his eyes nervously.

"Of course you will. Well then. You there, weasel-bearer, bear the weasel," he snapped, gesturing to Yann. Yann growled quietly, a low rumble of a sound that one might mistake for a distant stampede. The hippo shied away from the sound and went to stand with the rest of his kind. Yann took a step forward and hesitated a split second before turning his head and closing his jaws around the weasel once again.

**A/N: I know it's hard to picture a slimy and pompous hippo… kind of makes me want to laugh, actually. **


	9. Right Ring, Wrong Bell

**A/N: The hippos are now SHOVELmouths! Same thing as Ronald, the kid Manny catches at the beginning of IA3. Thanks to Perxio for setting me straight on that one. Couldn't for the life of me figure out what the dang things were called. Thanks also to Perxio for another encouraging review. I'm so very glad you're enjoying the story!**

**Spaz-kun, thanks for joining in, your enthusiasm is awesome!**

**CurrentlyMe – Buck/Pineapple is strange. Strange and wonderful. It was a fun scene. Thanks!**

**Ch. 9: Right Ring, Wrong Bell**

From Crash's view high up in the tree, he had witnessed the return of the big tiger, seen the irritation in his movements, and also the departure of the four tigers and Buck. The snow was beginning to let up, and Crash also watched as the small party stopped in front of the shovelmouth herd. It was a ways off, but he thought he saw Buck stand. That was good.

Crash couldn't hear a thing, though, and it looked as though some passionate discussion was going on. He waited long enough to see the shovelmouths and the three tigers (with Buck) get up and start moving southeast, down a joining valley.

Mindful of the one tiger now returning to the rest of the saber pack, the possum descended from the tree, retrieved Buck's knife from under the snow where he'd stashed it, and bounded off along Diego's pawprints. He found his friend crouching amongst a patch of dead, twisted vines.

"Did you see that?" Crash asked.

"See what?"

"They're leaving, down that smaller valley." Diego raised a confused eyebrow at him.

"Who?"

"Buck, three tigers, and the shovelmouths."

"The shovelmouths?"

"Yeah, part of that shovelmouth herd was just up there. Four of the tigers took Buck over to them, talked with them, and then three left with them."

"Down which valley?"

"That one that joins… they're going southeast."

"Oh, _that _one." Diego looked thoughtful, and Crash clasped his paws sheepishly in front of him. He wasn't used to doing stuff like this. He'd always wished he could do important things, save people, beat the enemy using his wits and skills… just like Buck. But here he couldn't even give a proper report.

"And they had Buck? How does he look?"

"Well, he was standing, over by the shovelmouths. Couldn't see much else."

"Alright. Crash, we need to know what's going on." The tiger's eyes flashed intensely and the possum's spirits rose a bit; Diego musthave a plan.

"Okay."

"We're going to catch up with them. When they stop, you're going to go up and investigate. Act like you're just curious."

"Wait, _what?_ But there are _saber-tooths!_ They could eat me! Bad plan!"

"Crash, no offense, but you don't look particularly appetizing. You're too fuzzy. If the tigers get hungry, they've got a whole herd of hairless shovelmouths for them to chew on. Just pretend you're traveling southeast from far north to… to visit your aunt Beatrice. You don't have a brother, you don't know Manny or Ellie or me or Sid and you most definitely have never seen Buck before. Got it?"

Crash nodded numbly, sure that he didn't 'have it' at all.

"Good. If Buck is stupid enough to show that he knows you, just… don't give in. Tell the shovelmouths that your… your sister was eaten by a weasel when you were young and you've never trusted weasels since then."

"Eww. Weasels don't eat possums."

"Yes they do, Crash," sighed Diego, rolling his eyes. "They'll eat anything they can kill, which happens to be a lot of things. Like possums. When you get there, ask them what's going on, see if you can find out where they're going. And whatever you do, _don't_ get yourself into any more danger than you have to. If you die, Ellie and Eddie will kill me. If they're not answering your _carefully dropped _questions, just leave. Okay?"

"Right, chief," said Crash weakly, and crawled up onto Diego's back, mindful of Buck's knife. The cat started running and Crash took a pawful of neck fur. His paws were shaking, he noticed, which was intensely annoying. He hadn't bargained for having to go into the jaws of mortal peril _alone_ when he'd gone with Diego. He wasn't an actor! He'd never be able to pull this off!

Well, alright, he wasn't that bad of an actor. In fact he was rather talented, if he said so himself. Which he did, in his head. Him and Eddie were always play-acting. This was the same. Except if he screwed up he was likely to get killed.

Buck would probably jump at the chance to put himself in mortal peril to save his buddy's life. _Be like Buck_, he told himself. It didn't make him feel particularly better, but it did make him smile a bit. Knowing that Buck deemed him a worthy friend over a worthy meal was a good feeling. Kind of like how Diego hadn't eaten him, either, or any of the rest of their herd.

He hoped he'd be able to see Eddie again to tell him that weasels ate possums. That was awesome.

:

-()-

:

Buck was experiencing hate. Before this, all his hate had been reserved for Rudy, and that had only been in his most bitter of moods. Those were rare. Buck had simply thought that he didn't have very much hate in him.

Clearly this was not the case.

He hated the shovelmouth leader, who was an arrogant hellion. The shovelmouth was the shining symbol of all the lowlifes out there who thought they could trample all over anyone who stood in their way.

He hated Ugly Mug for leading the sabers into capturing him, and he hated the sabers collectively for attacking Ellie and frightening Peaches and generally intimidating his friends. He especially hated whichever saber it had been that had first carried him, then pinned him on the ice.

He hated all the cold and the whiteness. Hated his shivering, even though he was lodged into the warm mouth of Yann. The snow passing by, the emptiness of the vistas he could see, the frozen water and the grey sky. The sparseness, the thin covering of existence up here. The fact that he couldn't _do _anything about it. The fact that he was being dragged, torn and helpless, through it all.

He hated Rudy's absence, and the upsetting confusion that would hit him whenever his mind struck on the white beast now.

Most of Buck's hate shot straight through to himself, though. When Yann had picked him up, he'd just gotten to the point where he could no longer avoid thinking about what the shovelmouth had told him. He was a murderer? He'd had a family? He'd been stupid enough to drag them down into that dangerous world? They were dead now, there was no doubt about it. He'd gone insane with grief, probably, or with guilt, or disease, or who knew why. But he'd forgotten.

And now he was starting to remember.

Yes, they had the right weasel, he told himself miserably. The shovelmouth hadn't made that story up, as much as he wished it. Buck knew it by the terrible, echoing ring of finality that sounded in his head and summoned up shreds and whiffs of memories he'd suppressed. That swamp in his head was tortuously divulging its secrets…

_Disappointment and guilt wrapped together like two thorny vines bent on suffocating each other. _

He wished the insanity would come back full-force. Maybe he wouldn't care then. He'd had a _family. _He'd had a wife, presumably another weasel. He could have had kids. What had been so important to him that he'd put their lives at risk?

_A tune, a voice that would have calmed his nerves had it not been from so deep in the swamp._

Yann rushed on over the powdery snow, his strides jarring loose more sounds and feelings and colors. Maybe they were taking him to be killed. If he could just stop thinking about everything until then, it wouldn't be so bad.

_For ever pushes East the light, and rises the sun - the dew clinging soft won't run. Bare your fangs and armor bright, beat it to the nodding night… _

That voice. It was the most agonizingly familiar thing he'd ever felt, yet he couldn't grasp what it was, and he wasn't sure he wanted to. No, he didn't want to, but he was deceiving himself again if he tried to tell himself that he didn't know who it was. She'd sung the lines to him, ever since… he'd been born. She always had. His wife- no, no. His _mother_.

His mother's voice. He missed her, and now he was weeping. A bit of irritation emerged at the lines he remembered and he pushed it away. It didn't know what it was saying. She was dead along with everyone else he'd dragged down there…

No, he hadn't dragged his mother down there. He'd dragged his wife, but not his mother. But strangely… strangely… they'd both been down there. He knew it. He'd forced them both. But not his _mom. _Not _him._

Something was wrong. It didn't feel right. With the same certainty that he knew the story was true, he knew his position in it was flawed.

:

-()-

:

The sun had started to set behind the dull sheet of clouds, and the herd had stopped moving a moment ago. Crash had secretly hoped that they simply wouldn't stop moving, thus allowing him to cling to Diego's back and not have to introduce himself to the three sabers and the shovelmouths. This was not to be his fate, though, and with the heavy hand of dread pushing down on him, he hit the snow next to his friend.

"Crash, I'm going to be right over here. I'll be watching. If anything happens, I'll run in, pick you up, and we'll be outta there." The tiger gave him a reassuring smile, and Crash accepted it gratefully, even though he knew as well as Diego did that simply rushing in and picking him up wouldn't be as easy as he'd made it sound. The possum put the knife down at Diego's feet, steeled himself, and bounded off towards another grove of pines. The plan was to get as far away from Diego via the trees as he could, thus leaving no tracks to follow, before coming back down and approaching the herd.

The trees were easy enough to travel across and he knew he'd be almost impossible to see in the starless twilight. His limbs were still shaking, though, making it a bit more difficult to go from branch to branch. _I wish Eddie were here_, he thought. Having his brother would have made things a ton easier. At least he wouldn't be doing this alone.

When he reached the ground, he was conveniently on the opposite side of the group from Buck and the tigers. After drawing in a breath and letting it out (an action that he found didn't help his nerves in the slightest), he forced his face into a sort of sly curiousness, or so he hoped, and went forward. His eyes kept darting to the tigers, and at one point he realized with a jolt that one of them was standing and watching him. It seemed to dismiss him, though, and for once he was glad he wasn't actually a big, ferocious, suspicious-looking animal.

The shovelmouths noticed him with disinterest. One of them took a half step towards him and Crash moved toward her.

"Hey there," he tried to say breezily, and didn't half fail.

"Hi." Her tone sounded a bit like what a wooden plank might sound like, could wooden planks speak. He guessed she was someone's cranky old mother-in-law.

"So I've been traveling down…" he panicked for a second, completely forgetting what it was that Diego had told him to say. "Uh, down this way, from up north, and noticed this little party… gotta admit, it's a strange group you've got here, shovelmouths and tigers."

"Sure is." Apparently not much of a talker.

"So what's going on?" he tried. Maybe if he tried the direct approach.

She regarded him coolly, and he got the feeling that wheels were turning in her head. He'd overstepped it, he knew it. She was going to raise her plate-sized foot and crush his skull.

"Where did you say you were from, cupcake?"

"Oh! Uh, north. I've been traveling for a while, a week or so. You know the glacier up at the head of this valley?" He gestured north. "Well, there's an ice-field beyond that. Takes a few days to cross. Then once you're over that-"

"Alright, alright, you're not from around here."

"That would be correct," he smiled, grateful that she'd bought his bag of lies. He had no idea what was up there.

"Well, then." Her eyes rolled up into the back of her head for a moment before she lowered them down again, along with her head. "We're packing a killer. We're taking him somewhere to be dealt with, but we need the tigers to guard him."

"A _killer?_" Crash asked, baffled. That had been about the last thing he'd been expecting. "Who'd he kill?" He wasn't sure he believed Buck was a killer, but he couldn't stop himself from asking anyways.

"He killed The Speaker. I'll bet you have no idea who that was."

"Right again. They sound like they were important though."

"Well… that depends on who you ask." She'd been leaning gossip-like towards him for the better half of the conversation, and now she knelt and sat down. Gesturing with her head for him to come closer, she continued in the same bored, secretive tone.

"Most of the dumb blubbers in this herd, not to mention anyone at all who was around at the time, would tell you all about how the death of The Speaker was the most tragic thing to happen in the past ten generations. Like they couldn't live without her. Sheesh," she huffed. Crash got the idea that he was listening to someone whose opinions were never respected or listened to by anyone else. "She was interesting, yes, but there was no need to _worship _her. We should have just kept our distance, I tell you."

Now she was just ranting. Crash wished she'd say something useful and explanative. She turned her eyes on him seriously.

"Now you can't go telling anyone else about this. We're told to keep our mouths shut about it and here I am not only telling you about it but also going on with my own opinions. I have a feeling the others wouldn't like my opinions but I'm just an old lady, they wouldn't listen to me anyways."

Crash made the 'my lips are sealed' motion.

"Good. Well I don't condone murder, obviously, but it's not like when Buck killed The Speaker we were all goners. Everyone else seemed to think we were, though, especially after that second young'n came along."

"Second _who?_"

"A second speaker, or something. Wasn't nearly as good as that first one. He'd loved her dearly, and he was madder than all get out about her death. He managed to tell us that whoever brought the weasel who'd killed her to him would be protected forever."

"Protected from what?"

"Oh, everything. Which is why we're not telling these tigers what we're really doing." Cynicism saturated her voice now. "Once we turn Buck over, the tigers won't be able to harm us. The humans won't hunt us. He even claimed that nature itself wouldn't be able to reach us. So of course all the animals who'd heard this started this frantic search for Buck. Huh," and she laughed a bitter laugh. "But he'd disappeared into a cave, along with the rest of his family. He had a wife and three little kids. Let's see, I used to know them by name. Those dratted kids would always be splashing around and sneaking up on the young shovelmouths."

She seemed to disappear into a thoughtful daze, and Crash was left standing there, mind reeling. He could think of no reason her story was false, besides the thundering insistence that Buck couldn't possibly be a murderer. There had to be an explanation. Maybe he'd killed for food. Weasels did that, didn't they? They ate whatever they could kill?

"Excuse me, but what kind of animal are these 'speakers', anyways?" he asked. She looked at him, eye ridges raised.

"I thought it would be obvious, cupcake. What other kind of animal of consequence lives around here and can't usually talk? A speaker is a human who can - … well, speak."

**A/N: I apologize for the Buck angst, but it seemed like the next logical step. ** **I don't really like writing angst, so I hope to wash that away soon. **

**If you're a bit confused at this point, that's ok – so are Buck and Crash. If you think you're more confused than Buck and Crash, then I haven't explained things properly. Let me know!**


	10. Agent Crimp

**A/N: CurrentlyMe, I hope to delve into detail about his family soon, as well as the circumstances of the murder. Unfortunately, all I've got now is a boring filler chapter. Sorry, you guys. Thanks for all the great reviews!**

**Ch. 10: Agent Crimp**

Buck had killed a talking human, taken his own family (_his _family!) down into that cave of death, and gone insane. Supposedly. This was all a bit far-fetched for Crash, who was a fan of both far-fetched theories and Buck. Either way, he was sure that _had_ Buck actually done those things, he'd either had a darn good reason to, or he was now a completely changed weasel. Buck couldn't even remember his past, or so Ellie had said.

"So… you're taking him to the humans?" he asked the old shovelmouth. But as he spoke, heavy footsteps had approached from behind.

"Marge," the male newcomer greeted, and the female shovelmouth nodded sarcastically. "What's all this then?" he grumped.

"Cupcake, this is Bronks, our herd chief," said Marge to Crash, who waved weakly at the heavy-looking shovelmouth. "The possum just wanted to know what was going on."

"What did you tell him?" Bronks's eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"We got ourselves a killer. I've been loading him down with fond old memories from back in the day, is all. Don't get your knees in a knot. He's from far away."

"I wasn't getting my knees in a knot," Bronks huffed, with an obvious hint of denial. He recovered quickly, and returned his gaze to Crash. "So, possum, what do you think?"

"What do _I _think? About what?"

"The killer."

"Oh. Well I don't know, it's not like I know the guy… although I do have a personal vendetta against weasels. When I was young…" and here he put on his best somber face, "a weasel killed my sister Ed-… ah, Edna. Weasels are foul."

"Right you are, possum, right you are," agreed Bronks. Marge was now the one giving Crash a suspicious look, and he hoped he hadn't acted too melodramatic there. "Say," said the shovelmouth chief, "Want to see him?"

See him? Why would he ask Crash if he wanted to see Buck?

"Uh… I don't know, weasels make me pretty nervous…" Bronks sidled up to Crash, looking to both sides.

"What about sabertooths? Do those make you nervous?"

"Well… yes, I mean of course. They make _everyone_ nervous."

"Yeah. The one animal that can stand a chance against them are humans. And that's where we're going. You know there's a saber pack following us?

"What?" He felt a pang of nervousness for Diego, who probably didn't know.

"Yeah. They think we're going to give them some of our own herd, just hand them over, as payment for helping us get the weasel to the humans. Well, if we give the humans the weasel, they'll protect us from the sabers, and they themselves won't hunt us. Good deal, huh?"

"Wow."

"But we need to tell them we're coming or they won't be ready to kill the sabers."

"Wait, _kill _them?"

"How else would they guarantee our safety?" Crash had the feeling that this shovelmouth might be overestimating the word of this Speaker and the other humans, but he wasn't going to say anything. In fact, he was going to nod and smile in a very admiring way. "Come with me," said the chief, and turned to start straight into the thick of the herd. Crash followed uneasily. The chief walked through the rest of the shovelmouths, all settling down for the night, and quite suddenly there were three sabertooths crouching in their view. Two sat a ways off, half facing the herd and the other tiger.

The third tiger looked a bit like it was chiseled out of ancient stone. He didn't look young but he did look as if he could command the skies to rain blood and lightning on his foes. He was staring at Chief Bronks as the shovelmouth approached and Crash wondered that the chief didn't collapse into a pile of ashes under the cat's gaze. For a fleeting moment Crash thought they were unintelligently interrupting the cat's meal, as there was a pile of fur and blood at its feet, but the spots on the pelt were, if a bit ruffled, unmistakable. Crash had only seen fur like that once in his life.

"That's Buck," said the chief, unnecessarily. The possum's muscles froze for a moment with shock and he feared his eyes were a bit too wide than would seem appropriate.

"Is it," he managed.

"Yep, that's the killer weasel."

"Is he… alive?" asked Crash, taking a cautious step forward.

"He'd better be alive," grumbled Bronks.

"He's sleeping," came the rumble of the tiger's voice. The pile of what was supposedly Buck twitched.

"That's Yann," Bronks said, rolling his eyes a bit. "Our big bad guard."

"He's not so bad," said the pile of fur groggily. It lifted itself off the ground a few inches, arms and head becoming apparent, and then it opened its eye.

Crash clapped a hand over his mouth, completely taken off-guard by the lack of eye patch. Buck blinked, eye snapping into focus. Confusion passed across his face.

"What's he doin' here?" asked the weasel.

"Why, you know him?" said Bronks.

"You think I'd be best buds with a possum when I could just as soon turn him into gumbo?" Irritation dripped from Buck's voice but for just one moment his eye connected with Crash's, and something tried to pass between them – Crash wanted to ask what was going on, and he was sure Buck wanted to ask what Crash was doing here, and perhaps also what was going on – but as neither of them knew the answer to any of those questions, the look did little more than serve as a very secret acknowledgement of each others' situations.

"You going to clean yourself up?" sniffed Bronks, eyeing Buck's fur. Buck let out an exasperated sigh, and leaned gingerly back against Yann's giant paws, arms folded behind his head.

"Why bother? I'm not going to a wedding, am I?"

"Do it, weasel."

"I can't, I'm lazy and stiff. Hurts too much to bend that way. " Crash saw a dash of worry flit across Bronks's face. Why would the shovelmouth be worried about that?

"Buck," tried the shovelmouth, "We never said we were going to kill you. If you let those wounds sit there like that they'll end up killing you for sure. Right then, possum, I imagine you don't want to see any more weasels than you have to. Let's go." Bronks turned and left, and Crash followed behind, with one backward glance at Buck.

"Say hello to your lovely family for me, possum," Buck called, "I won't be dropping by for dinner if I ever get out of this mess, not if they're all as ugly as you. I imagine you'd taste a bit like a buzzard's butt what got sprayed by a bunch of skunks!" Crash could think of no realistic reply to this, so for showmanship's sake, and to keep from smiling, he blew a raspberry. He wondered if Buck's message had really meant that he wouldn't return to Manny's herd if he ever escaped.

"Weasels," he scoffed, and Bronks grunted in agreement. The chief stopped somewhere on the other side of the herd, and gazed down on Crash.

"Possum… Say, what's your name?"

"My name? Uh, Crimp."

"Crimp. What do you say about giving us a hand? I've had this job for someone to do, but none of the shovelmouths would be able to do it. You'd be perfect."

_No way, dude, I'm a busy possum_, he should have said. "Well… sure, what is it?" he asked instead, immediately giving himself a mental slap. Bronks continued quietly.

"Someone needs to run ahead and tell the Speaker that we're coming, so they can prepare for the sabers. Those cats are going to want their food the second we hand over the weasel, and if they don't get it they're going to take more than they deserve. If the humans are ready, they can get the sabers before the sabers get us. The human village we're heading for is close, we'll get there late tomorrow. You'd have to go into the Speaker's shelter; he won't hurt you. Tell him we're coming. He'll understand you."

"Oh. Well… I mean I hate weasels and everything, and I'd love to help you turn him in, but… what's in it for me, you know?"

"By helping us, the Speaker is sure to bestow a gift upon you," said Bronks breezily. Crash couldn't bring himself to believe it, but he knew an opportunity when he heard one. If he could find out exactly where this human village was, he could return to Diego.

"I guess it's on my way, as long as it's in the general direction you guys have been going."

"It is. Just straight down this valley until everything flattens out into a plain. Turn left at the base of the cliffs, and they'll be there."

"Deal."

"If you don't do what I've asked, you'll be responsible for all of the many deaths that would result."

"Hey, hey, I'm on board."

"Good. Go as soon as you can, we want to give them plenty of warning. Don't let the tigers see you leave that way. Good luck."

Crash saluted, and tried to take on an excited, secretive air, as if he relished the thought of helping out the shovelmouth. The 'excitement' part was easy, since he was rather excited to get out of there and back to Diego. He passed Marge on his way through the animals, and waved, but was dismayed that she only gave him a calculating look. Frowning, he kept going, weaving in and out of the shovelmouths, most of which were laying down and sleeping by this time. A sense of immediate relief hit him once he'd left the crowd and started for the trees. He thought he could feel Marge's gaze on his back, and the more steps he put between her suspicion and himself, the better. She'd seemed so trusting at first, what in the world had he-

Weasel. She'd never told him what, exactly, the killer was. That was when she'd gotten suspicious, when he'd told the 'Edna' lie. _Oh, you idiot,_ he said, and sped up. What if she said something to Bronks? What if they sent sabers after him?

In the silence of the night, a cry split the stillness, and Crash knew it had been Buck. A bark of surprised pain. Not understanding why, he felt like the only way to help his friend now was to run away.


	11. Cleaning Crew

**A/N: This may get kind of weird. **

**Ch. 11: Cleaning Crew**

After Bronks had left with Crash, Buck had settled back with his head against Yann's paw, eyes closed, prepared to try to fall asleep again. He wouldn't call what he'd been doing before Bronks had come 'sleeping', really. He felt too miserable to sleep. When he'd whined about being stiff and sore he hadn't been joking. Oddly, his fur, encrusted as it was with all sorts of stuff, was making it harder for him to sleep that was the news that he was apparently a murderer and he'd had a family. Those terrible thoughts seemed to be dampening his mind, in fact. They made him want to shut down, and they made his mind feel lethargic.

Unfortunately, his body had decided that it'd had quite enough, and it did not care in the least what his mind wanted. Every unpleasant physical sensation seemed to be magnified threefold: the crisp needle-prick of billions of hairs, stiff with dried and frozen blood; the general stiffness that came with being tossed around like a dirty rag after encounters with fangs and claws; the sharp hunger that bubbled away grouchily in his stomach; the highly objectionable feeling of cold wind against his now-exposed eyelid and eye socket. And eye. Not that the actual orb could feel much anymore.

Now, after Crash had popped up, his mind had woken up a bit. It had drawn him back to the world where his friends dwelt, and his enemies. It hadn't made him feel all that much better, but it had allowed a small bit of perspective to creep into his already crammed mind, which, surprisingly, made it feel slightly less crammed.

Crammed enough, though. Crammed enough to feel entitled to use the forepaw of a giant saber-tooth tiger as a pillow. Well, really. Obviously Bronks had been lying. _Someone _was going to kill him, he was sure of it. And he'd rather it be Yann than a pathetic shovelmouth. He didn't really think Yann was going to kill him, though. He wasn't sure why. There was something fishy going on between Buck and Yann and if he hadn't been feeling so awful, he would have given it some thought.

He did make himself think about what in the world Crash had been doing. Probably sent by Diego to go act like he had no idea what was going on. He'd done a fair job, too. Buck just hoped Crash had the luck to get out of here without creating suspicion. And that he wouldn't try anything dumb. He probably would, though.

Yann was staring at him.

"How long have you been staring down at me like that? It's a bit creepy."

"Much as I hate to agree with the chief," rumbled the cat quietly, "you're being an idiot."

"He didn't say that."

"He was thinking it. And I'm definitely thinking it."

"_Why_ would I-"

"You seem so set on dying, Buck. Have you completely given up?"

"Well, yes. I suppose I have." He wasn't sure he was telling the truth, but he didn't care. "You heard what I did. I'm a murderer and I-"

"You make me sick."

"Oh, come on, grandpa, don't go launching into a speech about self-esteem."

"I mean you taste bad."

"Well that's as much a function of bleeding all over as it is being covered in _your _spit." Yann cursed under his breath and suddenly the tiger's mouth full of tree-sized teeth was opening above Buck's head and he thought he'd overstepped the line and was finally about to be killed and eaten, and his muscles started creaking into action to drag him out of the way, but it was too late –

"Aaahh!" he yelped, unable to struggle away from the pain that had just set his entire torso on fire. "Yann, what are you – Ow! Stop! Pain!" Yann ignored his pleas and his tongue continued to forcefully scour Buck's fur. Buck had a moment of panic and thought that Yann's tongue was actually going to remove his entire pelt from his body; that's what it felt like. If this was what it took to get clean around here, he was definitely okay with being dirty. Which he'd said all along.

Yann took another swipe at the fur on his chest and Buck tried again to get up, but the weight and considerable size of Yann's head wouldn't allow it, not to mention Yann's other paw, which was acting as an effective blockade against any possible escape. Pushing Yann's head away was completely out of the question, as he was feeling none too strong, and those saber teeth were awfully close to nicking his belly already.

"Yaaannn," he whimpered, "That _really hurts_." Yann wouldn't stop. "Men don't lick other men!" he tried. The cat paused long enough to tell Buck to take it like a man, then.

"People are staring," Buck whined.

"They're idiots too, it's okay." Buck let out an exasperated gasp of pain and steeled himself. On a good day he could have taken Yann to the ground. However, this was probably the worst day of his life, so stopping Yann was an impossibility. Besides, said some tiny corner of his mind, you'll feel better once it's over.

That corner of his mind, he soon found out, was a filthy liar. When Yann had tortured him sufficiently, Buck's fur was damp and it knavishly took in all the cold air it could hold. He clenched his arms around his chest and wished bitterly that he'd never left the warm, secret hollow far below their paws, that he'd never had the completely uncalled-for urge to come up to this frozen hell. Everything was so damned cold. The ground was cold, the people were icy, his past was freezing him.

And then, as if to prove him wrong twofold, a warm breath ruffled his fur and a warm memory ruffled his mind. _Bear your fangs and armor bright, beat it to the nodding night, _whispered the memory, _through the secret muddy lips of bugs and bogs and hollow bones; Our shadows hit these arcane crypts and sleep there as that heavy hand shifts its sway upon the land…_

The next best thing to having a mother there for him most certainly wasn't having Yann, but it could have been worse. At least Yann wasn't a cactus. Buck wedged himself into the cloud of fur between the tiger's front legs and sleep was suddenly a very real possibility. He admitted to himself that maybe he did feel a little better, even if his stomach was still trying to eat him from the inside out.

:

-()-

:

"Buck killed a _human?_" Diego asked, wide-eyed. "And had a _family_? Three kids?"

"That's what Marge said," reported Crash, who was confident that his reporting skills were getting better. He'd told Diego all about what he'd seen and heard, and had even shamefully told the tiger about how he'd slipped up and magically known that Buck was a weasel.

"Well this is a situation," said Diego, looking desperately thoughtful. Crash nodded his agreement. "Let's see. If we go to the human village, we could wait there for the shovelmouths and Buck-"

"And the sabers."

"-and the sabers to get there, and then when they're handing him over we can jump in and snatch him. That would be the best time to do it; we might create enough confusion to get away with it… but then what? Then the shovelmouths and the sabers go back to Manny's cave looking for him."

"Right."

"If I run, I can get back to Manny tonight, warn him to move, then run to the human village in time."

"But then you'd be tired."

"Do we have a choice?"

Crash thought, wishing he could come up with some other option, preferably one that didn't involve him being separated from Diego again. Remarkably, something struck him.

"Hold on, hold on," he said, flapping his paws in the air. "What if we _wait_ to get Buck until after the humans have…" _killed the sabers_, he was going to say, but stopped himself. Now that he thought about it, that didn't sound particularly ideal, either. He didn't like the sabers, naturally. They were predators, and they were usually nasty ones. But sitting there hoping that a bunch of them were about to be slaughtered so they could jump in and save their friend…

"After the humans have what?" asked Diego.

"Uh… killed the sabers," he finished. "But that seems weird." Diego thought for only a moment before replying.

"It seems weird, yes. But doing that could save our family's life. As well as Buck's. The shovelmouths wouldn't have anyone to send charging back to our cave when we help Buck escape the humans. The only other flaw in that plan is that if we wait for the humans to take care of the sabers, it might be too late for Buck."

"What do you mean?"

"We don't know what they'll do with him. They could kill him the second they set eyes on him." The unspoken issue here, Crash realized, was that if they wanted to make sure their family back at the cave was safe, they'd have to risk Buck's life while they were actually trying to save him. If they wanted a better chance of saving his life, they'd have to put their family's lives in danger.

Crash clutched the sharp, white knife tightly. He thought of his brother and his sister. He thought of his niece. He thought of the owner of the knife and he felt a fresh pang of fear attack his middle.

"I think we need to take that risk," said Diego, voicing Crash's thoughts. The possum nodded, feeling a bit like he'd just sentenced his hero to death.


	12. Storytime

**A/N: In case anybody was wondering about ch. 11, this story will involve no kind of romance. As funny as that could have gotten. **

**Spaz-kun and CurrentlyMe – Thanks for your continuing reviews! I was thinking, as I wrote the last chapter, that it could be perceived as slashy, but yes, Spaz-kun, kitties do that. **

**Amethyst DragonRider – I appreciate your reviews just as they come very much! Thanks a ton for your continuous support, it does quite a bit to inspire me to continue!**

**Lina-Shan, thanks also for **_**your **_**reviews, I'm grateful that you like the story! **

**Ch. 12: Storytime**

Something prodded him, said 'wake up', and he was on his feet, eye wide, wondering where his knife was. He'd never get used to being _told _to wake up. Usually when things roused him from sleep they were scaly and hungry, and were prodding him with their pointed teeth. Not that the current situation was any better. It was, in fact, several times worse.

Yann was on his feet, conversing quietly with who Buck assumed to be Kashif. The shovelmouths were waking up around him. The sun was just starting to spill into the valley and it looked like it was going to be a clear day. Which was pleasant, but it failed to make his stomach anywhere near happy. Someone was approaching rapidly from behind him and he turned, prepared to be staring straight into Bronks's ugly morning face and probably get assaulted by ugly morning breath.

A shovelmouth was indeed approaching, but she wasn't too ugly, and she proceeded to plop down amiably right next to him. Slightly disconcerted, Buck raised an eyebrow at her.

"Madame?" She put something on the ground.

"Thought you might be starvin' to death, cupcake."

He'd been too disconcerted to notice that she'd been carrying something in her mouth. Unlike the sky, it wasn't very pretty: it looked like a bouquet of wilted leaves and an assortment of fancy toothpicks. Also unlike the sky, it made his stomach twitch hopefully, much to his disgust.

"It's not poison," she informed him.

"Are you sure?" he asked, not recognizing any of it as edible.

"I've been livin' off this stuff for twenty-six years." Buck shrugged, thinking that it probably didn't matter much if it _was _poisonous. He'd eaten much, much worse in the short slice of his life that he remembered, anyways. Still, the most appetizing-looking leaf was a gloomy prospect.

"While our lovely chief Bronks is off conferring with the rest of those sabers I thought I'd have a sit with you."

"Oh?" he said, wondering what she could possibly want. The leaf tasted a bit like the bottom of a pterodactyl's foot, which he'd accidentally gotten in his mouth once. The leaf was, thankfully, decidedly less tough than said foot.

"I just wanted to say, I hope your little friend knows what he's doing."

Buck did his best not to choke in surprise. Coughing discretely, he looked questioningly at the shovelmouth.

"The possum," she explained.

"Not my friend, I'm afraid."

"Don't try to kid me. I'm a gossip. I can read your mind."

"Well, I suppose I won't waste time trying to convince you otherwise. Thank you for the, uh, food, by the way." Trying to act nonchalant, he checked out the periphery of his vision. If anyone heard her talking about Crash that way, Bronks or the sabers might hear about it, and then what? He didn't need another death to his name.

"You're welcome. Don't worry about me telling Bronks about the possum, though."

"Telling him what? We're buddies? That I met him down in that cave and I decided it would be more fun to hang out with him than to eat him, given the abundance of food, and when I say abundance, I really mean complete lack of?" He took another bite of the bitter greens, chewing morosely.

"You don't need to lie to _me_, Buck. You can trust me. You know, I don't really think that what you did to that human was completely unjustified."

This time Buck couldn't help but choke.

"_Human?_" he asked, taken completely off-guard. A look of confusion passed across her face.

"Yes, the Speaker."

"The who now?" He'd been wondering absently about the details of the supposed murder he'd committed, but he hadn't wanted to hear it from Bronks.

"Did you _really _loose your memory?" she asked suspiciously.

"Yes! Completely. I don't remember anything but the past few… I don't even know how long. Nothing from when I was up on the surface before going into the cave." It felt nice complaining about his memory to someone who he knew probably wasn't going to smack him for it. Someone who seemed to be comparatively sympathetic.

"Wow," she said, with a hint of pity. "Well maybe I should enlighten you."

"I don't know if I _want_ to be enlightened, actually…"

"What you did isn't as terrible as you might think it is. It's just Bronks and the rest of these idiots overreacting." He didn't believe her. Morbid curiosity kept him from protesting when she started speaking again. "I suppose you don't know what a Speaker is."

"Not really," he said faintly.

"A human who can speak to animals. Well, not _speak_, really, not like you and I do. But they've kind of got a language that we can understand. So there was this lady Speaker a few years ago, lived at the encampment we're going to."

"We're going to an encampment?"

"Well, yes. That's where Bronks is bringing you. Let me explain," she said importantly. She continued almost as if she was proud of being able to deliver the news of his fate to him. "The lady Speaker. For a human, she was pretty. Young, I'll guess, but who knows what human lifespans are like. She'd always be coming over to us and the other animals and speaking. Spent more time with non-humans than with her own people, with the possible exception of the other Speaker. He followed her around wherever she went.

"Well," she continued, with a hint of bitterness, "everyone thought that she was just the coolest thing since the evolution of mammals. They absolutely worshipped her. She'd sit there all happy and _weave_ things out of plants and flowers and stuff and put them on our children's heads. Whenever anyone got hurt, they'd go to _her_, with her fancy opposable thumbs, and she'd just heal them right up, or so they said. It never occurred to anybody that if _she_ knew where all the animals were, so did the rest of the humans. The hunters.

"You, Buck, thought this was completely insane." Buck didn't see the situation as 'completely' insane, although it did sound a bit odd. Then again, who knew what he'd been like before the cave? "Mind, it was rumored that you'd never really been mentally stable."

"What? I've _always _been insane?"

"Well no. Just a bit off center. Nobody blames a weasel for being a little paranoid about things."

"Why?" Truthfully, he didn't know a thing about how to be a weasel. He just knew how to survive a lost world.

"Well, nobody likes them. Especially if they're male. Calling someone a 'weasel' is an insult because weasels are sneaky scoundrels who don't keep their word, deal under the table, and are deceitfully dangerous. Not to mention humans love your fur, so you're not going to be a big human fan in the first place. Oh, and Buck, that's just what people say about weasels. Don't think _I _believe any of that."

That didn't do much to deflect the sting that her words had delivered. He'd had no idea weasels were so disliked up here. Now that he thought it, he always _had _told himself not to act weasely, but he'd never really thought about why.

"Surprisingly, even I don't really know what was going on in your head. But one day you just… killed her. Wish I could put it more delicately."

"How? How did I…"

"Well, we heard her screaming bloody murder, which it most certainly was, so we all came running. Down by the waterhole – it's really more of a frozen swamp now – there she was, floating in the water, kind of twitching. Neck all ripped open. Quite a sight."

He couldn't believe she was telling this story so indelicately. Maybe she was actually trying to make him feel bad about what he'd done. Well, it was working.

"When we got there, the other human, the male… well, clearly he was in love with her, the way he followed her around. He was attacking you with a hatchet, he was. We thought you were going to kill him too, but he got you across the face – guess that's where your eye went."

He opened his mouth to protest, and say that actually he'd lost it to a large, white dinosaur, but now that he thought about it, maybe he'd imagined that too.

"So you kind of stumbled off into the brush with your son. Worst part about the whole thing was probably that your son was with you and saw everything. Well, the male human didn't chase you, but he wishes he had."

"How do you know?"

"He's said as much. After that happened, he yelled up at us, he said, whoever brings me that weasel will be protected from all predators and humans for the rest of time. Or he tried to, but he's not that great at Speaking. But we all got the picture. So then everyone rushed off to find you, all the shovelmouths and diatrymas and gazelles and everyone who'd heard. They all wanted to be the ones that captured you. It was ridiculous, I tell you, everyone running around with their tails on fire. Ha."

Her laugh pinged against his ears. How could she laugh? Didn't she understand how hard this was to hear? Maybe she wasn't sympathetic, maybe she just liked to hear her own voice. However abrasive she was, however, he couldn't stop her from talking. He was too wrapped up in the story of his past to stop her.

"So what they say is that some molehogs saw you and your family disappear into this cave thing. Now, they were terrified, because you were weasels, but they went down there anyways, chasin' after you. But if there's anything special about weasels, it's that you're quick and you've got endurance, so you all disappeared into that cave and never came out, until now. Some poor beasts have gone down there looking, but they never come up again."

Buck frowned, knowing full well why they hadn't returned.

"So there you are. That was you, that's your crime, and that's your future."

"My future?"

She gave him a pitying look. "Well, with the male Speaker. That's where they're taking you. Once we get there, the humans will supposedly protect us from the sabers, so we won't have to worry about them. The sabers don't know that, though, since they weren't around when you killed the Speaker."

"Oh." He thought for a moment, and absently reached for another leaf. Her story had seemed familiar, in a distant, half-removed sort of way. He wanted to ask her why, if she felt that what he'd done hadn't been all that bad, she was going along with the rest of the herd. Why she wasn't saying something to stop what was about to happen. But she was just another member of the herd. She might have slightly skewed opinions, but that didn't mean she would act upon them. She was probably happy to be granted protection from the sabers, even if it meant giving him to the human.

"How much did you know about my family?" If she was going to give him all the gory details, he hoped she'd at least know a bit about his kids and wife.

"Oh, not much. You weasels mostly keep to yourselves. You had three kids and a lovely wife. I think her name was… nah, I don't remember. But she was always yelling at your two daughters, they were constantly getting themselves into trouble. _Spring, Tacet, get your noses out of there right now! _ Spring and Tacet, those were your daughters."

"Wellspring," said Buck. "Her name was Wellspring." The name had come as easily as breathing, and just as thoughtlessly. Saddened, he dropped the half-eaten leaf, ignoring the hunger pangs. "What about my son?"

"Your son was a good boy. He never seemed to get into any trouble, at least not with his sisters. We never saw him much. Can't recall his name. Are you going to finish that salad?"

He shook his head, and she demolished the pile with one bite. Someone approached from the side, and this time it was, unfortunately, Bronks.

"Well, we'll be taking off in a moment, Marge, after those sabers get their act together. Say, Buck, you look clean today."

Buck snorted.

"Where's that guard of yours? Yann?" he called. The tiger was still standing over by Kashif. "Time to move! Come grab the weasel." Bronks left and Yann approached, Marge chewing and watching, slightly awe-struck.

"You're walking today," said Yann, taking a seat next to Buck and waiting for the shovelmouths to assemble themselves. Buck couldn't imagine why in the world they'd allow him to walk – what if he tried to run away? But then, there _were _three sabers here to chase him down, as well as a pack of them bringing up the rear. As fast and long-winded as weasels may be, he wasn't in any shape to outrun a saber-tooth. Trying to escape would still have been a very attractive option, were it not for the fact that if he did manage to leave, they'd probably go straight back to Manny's cave, looking for him.

He realized then that it bothered him very much that the sabers were all likely to be killed very soon. Well, mostly it bothered him that _Yann_ might get killed. Yann was still going along with the plan, so Buck wasn't sure why he was concerned for the big cat. He'd cleaned him and kept him warm, but Yann was still his guard. Likely to hurt him if he tried to run.

After Bronks had a fit about Yann allowing Buck to walk, and after Yann made it quite clear that the only way Buck would be carried was if the shovelmouth chief did it himself, the herd started moving. Buck tried to sort out his thoughts as he walked – how he could get out of this without putting Manny and the others in danger, if he wanted to warn Yann about the upcoming skirmish, what Crash and Diego might be planning, if Rudy was still alive, if Rudy had been the one that had killed his family, if that was why he held such a vendetta against the white beast, why his wife had been so lovely, why his daughters had been so rowdy, why his son had been so quiet, why he'd thought they would be safe down in that cave, why his mother's lullaby and his daughter's name came so freely, why everything seemed just a little off, and whether it might be the right thing to do to simply allow himself to be taken by the Speaker. Needless to say, he couldn't sort them out as he walked next to Yann, even though he knew these could very well be his final hours.

**A/N: Don't quote me on shovelmouth lifespan. Also, keep in mind how big prehistoric weasels were. Judging from some saber/human scenes in IA 1 and some Buck/Diego scenes in IA 3, I'd say Buck is very roughly two and a half feet tall. Thus making it slightly more believable that he could kill a human… **


	13. Bad Omens

**A/N: Spaz-kun – More will be illuminated! Not sure how much more, or when, but it will happen. Thanks for the review!**

**CurrentlyMe – you're goofy, you know that? :D That is quite the image you've put in my head now… I never saw 10000 BC, but I recall from a poster that those sabers were quite monstrous. If I were going by those fellas, Buck would be more like… sheesh, as tall as a human!**

**Thanks for all the reviews, reviewers. I'm grateful for each one. I'd send you all fresh blueberries but I have the sneaking suspicion that you may not appreciate them by the time they arrive… **

**Ch. 13: Bad Omens**

The human village sat there looking all sleepy and pretty in the morning sunlight and Crash thought he'd never been quite so terrified of anything in his entire life.

"So one more time," he repeated, for the sake of stalling. "I'm supposed to go in there, somehow find the Speaker's house thing, somehow find the Speaker himself, and tell… tell him that the shovelmouths are bringing Buck, along with a pack of sabers that they want the humans to kill."

"Sounds about right." Diego and Crash had crept upwind and upslope of the village, a convenient location to see pretty much anything that happened in the vicinity. Diego was going to stay where he was and wait for Crash to get back. If Crash didn't get back – say, the Speaker kept Crash around, or the Speaker incapacitate him – then he'd wait for the humans to attack the sabers before finding the Speaker and taking Buck back. The plan was messy and risqué, but it was all they'd been able to come up with in the little time they had had. "Alright, just remember to avoid the dogs."

Crash nodded, not quite trusting himself to speak. Approaching shovelmouths and sabers by himself had been bad. But it was pie compared to approaching _humans_. Leaving the knife with Diego, and holding in the urge to give an 'if I die, tell Ellie this and Eddie that' speech, he waved weakly and started through the snow to the village.

The smell of dog hit him hard, and he stiffened, looking around. No wolves as of yet. _Keep going_, he said, forcing himself to move. If anything attacked him right now, Diego would jump to his rescue. But once he got into the actual cluster of shelters… Which was about to become the case…

_Buck wouldn't pause here,_ he thought, while pausing. That thought did little to calm him, as had been the trend whenever he pulled it out. He simply wasn't Buck. He simply wasn't insane. There were killer dogs in there and if they saw him they'd probably pick him up by the head and shake him back and forth until –

The dogs were on leashes. Right. Keep moving.

He crammed himself against the wall of the closest shelter he came to and poked his head around the corner, trying not to notice what the shelter was made of. No dogs in sight. A central fire pit… Actually, three central fire pits, spread out. This camp was bigger than it had looked from the outside. Lots of shelters, one huge one near the middle. An old, bent female was emerging from a flap, holding a bag of sorts. Two kids were running around on the far end of the camp, playing with a small animal. Probably a puppy. He'd try to avoid that end, if he could. What would the Speaker's place look like, though?

A man emerged from the shelter he was clinging to, and he cowered into the long shadows. The man stretched and walked across the way to another tent. Crush took the opportunity to cause his pulse to skyrocket and sneak around to take a peek inside. It was a rather empty place, pretty cave-like. Furs on the ground, he could smell their pungent, stale odor. A turtle shell, some nondescript piles of what was decidedly not the Speaker.

Crash backed out and rushed to the next shelter. Someone was definitely snoring inside. Looking in revealed nothing remarkable, so he moved on again. He looked in on two more shelters, beginning to think that perhaps all of the dogs and the humans were out hunting, when a suspicious smell assaulted his nose. It was part dog stink, part old-fur odor, even part weasel musk, but with distinct whiffs of flat-out decay, blood, and something altogether alien to him.

He scrutinized the shelter it was coming from. Someone also seemed to be snoring sharply from within this one. There were bones dangling around the entrance. With a pang, he realized that this must be the place, that he was about to enter it, that he was actually about to encounter a human and be expected to not run away. There was nothing he could do to calm his nerves, so he simply pushed through the flap and tried to ignore the sense of doom beating about his head. The smell that met him was almost enough to knock him off his feet into a 'possum' stance.

It was smoky in this shelter. There was a small fire burning in the center, eating away at the green leaves of some sort of herb. Many furs covered the ground, and more of them hung from bones that were attached to ceiling supports. A fine layer of white dust seemed to coat everything, thicker at one end of the shelter than the other. At that end there stood a small table hewn from the heartwood of a giant white pine, and Crash could just make out the tops of many white, still shapes atop it.

And that shadow that was hanging near the table was definitely not a fur, like he'd first thought. It was a human. They were doing something on top of the table that involved a very sharp and very dangerous looking tool, and when they stopped moving, the snoring sound stopped too.

The human was staring at him.

His gaze wasn't exactly piercing, veiled as it was by a weak haze of smoke. Crash walked slowly towards the center of the room, staring at the human, hoping against everything that this was, in fact, the Speaker, and that he wasn't about to kill him. The human stood and took a few steps forward before crouching on the other side of the fire.

"Welcome," he said.

"You really _can_ talk," said Crash in surprise, before he could stop himself.

"Yes, of course," said the human, slowly, with a thick accent. His face looked to be fairly young, and was framed by greasy black hair that swept around his neck as if his head was encased by two giant, black, polydactyl claws. A necklace of teeth and fish bones dangled on his bare chest, which was, Crash thought, a bit insane, given the temperature outside. He held the odd tool in his left hand, and in his right he clutched the longbone of a gazelle, and Crash realized he'd been sawing bone. And that's probably what the white dusting was; bone dust. He had the sudden urge to hold his breath.

"Uh, I bring news," he said instead. "The shovelmouths…" he paused, momentarily overcome by the strangeness of the situation. The warmth, the fur under his paws, the smoke and the bone dust floating in slow motes in the glare of the fire, and that human, staring at him with an intensity that had suddenly flared furiously. Doubt poked at his brain.

"What news?" insisted the Speaker.

"The shovelmouths are coming with a pack of sabers behind them," he continued, as if under a spell.

"What? Sabers? Forgive," said the Speaker, in his strange dialect, "I am not top of your words."

"Saber-tooth tigers. Ah, big cats." He pointed to his teeth. The human nodded. "Yes. They're coming, and they… they have Buck."

The Speaker stared helplessly.

"Buck," tried Crash, wondering how to expound. "The weasel?"

"The _weasel?_ The soul-eater?" Crash could only raise his eyebrows at that one. Soul-eater? He hoped that was just a mistranslation. He nodded, and the human sprang to his feet, started searching through a stack of poles along the edge of the shelter. "How many suns away?"

"Suns? Oh… a half a sun?" The human was rushing around now, and Crash feared he'd accidently get stepped on, so he backed up to the wall.

"And cats, how many?"

"Maybe twelve. I didn't count."

"Twelve? What is this, is this a lot?"

"Uh, yeah, I guess…" he shrugged, not knowing how to explain 'twelve' to a person who wouldn't slow down to tie their own shoes. The laces dangled dangerously and Crash eyed them, wary of tripping humans.

"And how many herd?"

"A lot. Many."

The Speaker, long pole in hand and now completely clothed, rushed out through the flap without so much as a 'thank you'. Crash thought he'd caught the same kind of glint in his eye as he'd seen in Rudy's, right before Buck had distracted the dino. He poked his head out the flap and watched, seeing now that the pole had a long, curved, sharpened bone bound to the end. What kind of monstrous beast had he taken _that _rib from?

Now the Speaker was shouting unintelligibly to the other tents, bashing on the walls with the weapon. Excited men started to emerge, weapons in hand, dogs in tow. As soon as Buck saw the dogs, he backed into the smoky shelter. He'd have to wait for the canines to leave the site before he himself could. He'd done his job; now he just had to get back to Diego.

For the moment, the interior of the Speaker's shelter was keeping his attention quite fixed. He kept noticing little morbid details: dried bird carcasses stacked one on top of the other and all shishkebabed on a sharp branch, leaning in a corner next to a cluster of… tails?... and that pile of bones on the table, that was a good amount of bones; dozens of turtle shells lining the walls, some empty, some filled with water, some with congealed, dark crimson blood; a number of shiny, irregular grey lumps arrayed on a woven mat; a stash of knives. The knives were mostly bone, but a few seemed to be chipped from some sort of black stone. They all looked wickedly sharp, and most were longer than Buck's.

Crash put all four paws on the ground and stroked one of the fur rugs. The pieces were sewn together from a dozen or so creatures each and were all remarkably soft. From what he could see in the dim light, they were brown and a few had spots, and all were quite skinny…

He stood up quickly. They were all weasel pelts.

That was a whole ton of weasels. At least a couple dozen. Where had he found them all? Had that been his life since Buck had killed the female Speaker? Hunting down weasels? It suddenly felt highly disturbing to be standing on top of these skins, so Crash moved to the closest chair and started to climb up, cringing. He wished the dogs would leave, already. He didn't like it in here.

Sitting on the seat, he carefully looked around again and noticed for the first time a number of cages. They'd been obscured from his position on the ground by a hanging wolf pelt and deep shadows, but they were quite obvious right now. Built of bone, like many things in this shelter, and twined to security with what looked to be woven cordage and tendon. There were four of them, each a different size. One of them had a repulsive-looking pile of decay in it, pale skin showing through where fur had fallen out, bones poking up sharply from beneath.

Crash turned away. And _this _was where Buck would be brought, in all probability. Unless the speaker killed him outright. This did not bode well.

After a few tense moments, the sound of barking slipped away as did the bustle of human movement. The Speaker didn't return, for which Buck was grateful. He left the shelter, taking in a deep breath of fresh air and appreciating the apparent lack of dog before leaving the village itself. He hoped never to have to return to it, but he had the feeling he'd have to, before this mission was over.

Thankfully, Diego hadn't had a reason to move from the spot he'd been waiting. A wave of relief hit the possum as he plopped down next to his friend.

"Whew. I did it. Told the Speaker that the herd and the sabers were coming, and they had Buck."

"I figured you did, yeah. That was quite the uproar a few moments ago. All the hunters and their dogs left, circled past right in front of me. Half of them are waiting down in those trees, the other half are going up the steep side of the valley to close in behind. And I think a few stayed behind, in the huts. All the women and children are in that central lodge thing."

"Did you see where the Speaker went?"

"What did he look like?"

"Scary-looking young guy with longish black hair. He was carrying a pole with a sharpened bone stuck to it."

"Oh, him. Running around hitting the shelters. I didn't see him leave the village, he must be in there somewhere." Crash nodded, and picked up Buck's knife once again. It was strangely comforting to be holding it, but also a little disconcerting to think that the rightful owner didn't have access to it.

For the next few hours, they paced carefully and kept their eyes peeled for the herd, or any sabers, coming down from the valley. Time seemed to stretch and shrink, depending on how worried Crash was at the moment. He kept hearing things over his shoulder and seeing shadows in the sky. Snow-laden branches were bleached bones and patches of exposed rock scattered with red pine needles were the bloody remains of freshly-skinned animals. The waiting was horrible.

The sun had started its descent into the west and shadows had reversed themselves by the time Diego pricked his ears and sat up straighter.

"Think I hear them," he whispered.

"Where? I don't hear anything…"

"Wait a moment." And Crash waited a moment impatiently, then another moment, and finally, _finally_, there they were, a mass of shadows coming around the valley wall like some huge, rough beast slouching towards them, carrying the approaching darkness on its shoulders.


	14. The Sound and the Silence

**A/N: Perxio, CurrentlyMe, Faith, Amethyst, RogueStar, Spaz-kun, sour-lemon, and BBVixen (excuse my laziness with names), thanks for your awesome reviews of awesomeness. They are truly awesome. I hope you all have wonderful days. **

**A special thanks to Alteng! I can't believe you left such thoughtful reviews on every single chapter, I'm kind of baffled. You seem to have a very keen sense of characterization and your suggestions and critiques strike me as exceptionally helpful and relevant. You're right about (among other things) the human v animal perspectives, I haven't done the best job with that. I'll try to pay that more attention, but it's quite hard for me to do and I'm actually very lazy. It's apparent that you're really paying attention to details, you must be a very careful reader! I'm honored that you're reading my fic and leaving such great reviews!**

**Lastly: Lina-Shan! You speak Spanish?! I think it would be super awesome if you left reviews in Spanish! I took four years of it and I'd love to read some reviews in Spanish! Or try to read them, anyways. Either way, I'm so grateful you've stuck with this story, thanks for all the reviews!**

**Ch. 14: The Sound and the Silence**

The smell of humans had been obvious to Buck for almost a mile, and by the way Yann kept staring into the woods suspiciously, he had been able to sense it too. Smoke and sweat. He hadn't smelled that scent for a very long time, and it evoked bad feelings in him. The shovelmouths were acting oblivious to it. These humans they could smell were probably going to be the humans that ended up trapping the sabers and killing them all once they arrived at the human village. Which was, Buck guessed, just around this next bend.

"Smell that?" asked Buck of Yann quietly, leaning towards the tiger.

"Humans," murmered Yann.

Yann couldn't possibly not realize that the humans were following them, and that this was all a trap. But if he were smart, which Buck was sure Yann was, he would have run by now. Why wasn't he running?

"Why aren't you running away?" he whispered.

"Why aren't _you _running away?" the cat retorted.

"I asked first."

"And I answered." Buck thought about that one, and realized that Yann wasn't

running yet because he himself hadn't run yet. He wasn't sure what to make of that.

"You're not just going to walk yourself up to the humans and let them kill you, are you?" asked Yann. "I'm letting you walk for a reason." Buck didn't respond for a moment, slightly shocked at the frankness of Yann's support. If he were to trust Yann, and he did, then that meant he'd be able to run without immediately getting knocked down again. He had no idea how Kashif or Tarang figured into this, but it did mean he had a better chance of escaping than he'd originally thought. That did, however, leave the problem of the shovelmouths. If Buck escaped now, the shovelmouths would send more sabers off to find him. Probably go look for him at Manny's cave.

He could always hope, of course, that perhaps Manny and the others had moved to wait at a different location. Or that whoever did go to look for him would have the decency not to harm his friends if clearly he wasn't there. But that was too much to hope for. The shovelmouths probably knew that that was the only reason Buck wasn't trying to escape. He wouldn't put it past them to make their threats real. He couldn't risk it.

They were heading east now, around the corner of the rise of the valley wall. Buck could see smoke plumes. It was only a matter of moments before they'd be able to see the humans. And for the humans to be able to see them.

If the sabers aborted their mission and escaped now, it wasn't as if the shovelmouths could do anything about it, he reasoned. The sabers wouldn't be in the mood to work for the traitorous shovelmouths again, and if Buck warned the sabers himself, perhaps the sabers also wouldn't be in the mood to try to find him and catch him again.

That left the problem of the shovelmouths finding some other poor bunch of ferocious carnivores to do their bidding. This was entirely possible.

They crested a small hill and the human village came into view, momentarily yanking Buck back into the present, away from his thoughts of escape. Bigger than he would have expected, the village probably held a few dozen hunters, some of which were definitely behind him. Now he was starting to get rank whiffs of dog, and he hoped they didn't have many of them.

Bronks was now trotting out ahead of his herd, looking antsy and more than a little self-righteous. He was distracted by the human village, and was also a ways ahead of Buck and Yann. A human had appeared near the front of the village, and Buck averted his eyes. He was sure that the human was about the last place he wanted to look at the moment.

_Now_, he thought, _now, now, do something NOW!_ But he was frozen into a predetermined path and could find no good way to get out. The Speaker was waiting for him moments away and the humans behind them were probably creeping closer by the second. The least he could do was try to save Yann, but what about the rest of the tigers? What about –

"If you run, I'll run," said Yann, and Buck glanced at him.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Run!" Yann growled, his eyes suddenly lit up terribly, and his giant paw swung out and caught Buck across the back, propelling him towards the woods to their left.

He caught the hint, and instinct combined with adrenaline combined with a sudden lack of thought forced him to start running, sprinting to the trees. Something snapped at his tail and he ran faster. Shouts behind him – the indignant cry of Bronks, the surprised and angered roars of the sabers who had caught sight of the humans behind them, and a strange call, a muffled one that latched onto his spine like a parasite and gave him chills and made him want to drop back down to the hidden world, safe with Rudy –

The smell of dog hit him in the face and he slowed, Yann almost running over him. They were coming from the left, leading a group of hunters that had been hiding.

"We can't outrun dogs," wheezed Buck, his lungs protesting mightily against the sudden movement. Dizziness caused him to sink to all fours and he cursed the fact that Marge hadn't brought him any real food.

"Look," said Yann, gesturing ahead and to their right. A broken cliff cut down from the steep hill, snowy and treacherous, rising higher than he could see through the trees. "Dogs can't climb," the cat continued. Wordlessly, they took off for the rocky wall, humans shouting and dogs barking behind them. The dogs had been let off their tethers and Buck knew they wouldn't make it, canines were too fast and his head was pounding faster than he could run…

His feet left the ground and his vision turned sideways. Yann's mouth, once again. He'd been hoping he was done with that sort of experience. Albeit, the cliff was now approaching much faster, if not more painfully. Closer, closer, and Buck could almost imagine that perhaps they were going to make it, when a golden blur sprang in front of them and landed, fur on end, grey lump on shoulders, teeth flashing. Yann stopped abruptly and dropped Buck unceremoniously on the ground, ready to spring at the new sabertooth.

Belated recognition caused Buck to step between them.

"No fighting, we're all friends here!" he shouted, holding up his paws. Diego's snarl fell and Yann's growl ceased.

"Up the cliff," said the huge tiger instead, pushing Buck ahead.

"What's going on?" asked Diego as they all sprang at the rock face and started climbing.

"I don't know," Buck gasped, "I think I'm escaping. You and Crash should get back to Manny quick as you can and move them."

"Why, what's-"

"They might look for me there!" His paw slipped off a piece of ice and he clung to the rock with two paws for a moment. The dizziness hadn't left him and his head felt like it wasn't attached properly.

"Who?"

"I don't know, but Ellie and the others might be in danger. Diego, I'm not-"

A sound hit his ears and he froze. The dogs were now barking up at them and the humans were catching up rapidly, waving their spears and shouting, but still a sound crept past all of that and made him stop. It was that heavy cry that had crept up his spine just a minute ago. Its voice was furious and harsh, desperately shouting out words that Buck couldn't quite decipher.

"Buck, are you-"

"Quiet!" he hissed, ears pricked and eye wide.

_"…weasel, I have her! Stop running or I kill! Soul-eating, murdering weasel, I have your moon-child!"_

His child!

"Buck, move!" came Diego's harsh cry. And Buck did move, but it was sideways and toward the reaching branches of a white pine. The dogs below him barked frantically and his world tilted dangerously, but he didn't pay that any heed. His furious headache and the ache in his middle had disappeared in the wake of what the Speaker had just said.

"Buck!" shouted Crash and Diego, as he jumped for the branch and caught on to it. He turned and looked back at them. Yann was paused next to Diego, also staring at him.

"He has my child," Buck shouted, "I need to go back! Yann, I hope I can thank you properly someday. Diego, Crash, get back and move your family!" He turned back and lunged to the base of the branch, started bounding across the next one, traveling across the trees to where he'd be able to drop down and get to the Speaker. He could hear three voices shouting at him from behind, but they didn't understand, they simply couldn't understand that there was no possible way he could go with them now, not when he had family alive, not when the Speaker was going to kill his child.

The terrible voice was still shouting, getting angrier by the second, and Buck moved faster, leaping recklessly from branch to branch, heart racing in his chest. Upon reaching the last tree he shot down the trunk, somehow managing to not tumble to the bottom. He'd never been more afraid in his life as he scrabbled down the bark, but he'd never been as hopeful, as painfully anxious, as he was at this moment – his child was _alive?_ He had _family?_

He hit the snow and turned, facing the village.

The Speaker stood there, looking livid with fury, eyes narrowed to dark slits as he glared at the newly-arrived weasel. In one hand his knuckles whitened around a long-armed weapon of sharpened bone.

His other hand was latched around the scruff of a chestnut weasel, who struggled in vain to free herself. Her eyes landed on Buck and she froze, recognition fighting to surface on her face.

"Dad?"

Tacet, it was Tacet, his… his…

He hesitated only a moment before taking two steps toward her, and then running to where she was being held. The barking up on the hill had died away and he couldn't care less whether the sabers or the humans had won. The two-legged creatures were now circling around the shovelmouths and Buck didn't spare them a glance. The Speaker was smiling terribly as Buck came closer and Tacet's eyes were starting to narrow in confusion as she hung there, absently cringing, as if she couldn't believe.

He stopped a few bounds away from the Speaker's feet and stared up at his kin, baffled.

"Tacet," he said.

"You're not Buck," she replied quietly, disbelief and fear evident on her face, in her voice. He opened his mouth to say _Yes I am _but a hand closed around his neck and lifted him up. He hadn't heard the human come up behind him and now the Speaker dropped Tacet to the ground, where she rolled to her feet and looked up at him. He tried to loosen the fingers that now passed him to the Speaker but they wouldn't give, not even as he gouged them with his claws, and now the Speaker had a fistful of the back of Buck's neck and was gripping it so hard that Buck felt himself paralyzed and unable to do anything but hang there like one dead.


	15. Lucky Knot

**A/N: CurrentlyMe, I am delighted that you hate the Speaker so much. This is as it should be!**

**Perxio: Your questions will be answered in Ch. 16! If all goes as planned.**

**Spaz-kun y Lina-Shan – Muchas gracias para sus comentarios! Y Lina-Shan, esa pausa larga fue cuando pensando demasiado... optimistamente terminaré esta cuenta. Tengo una pregunta para ustedes! Utilizaron la palabra "historia" en sus comentarios y yo no sé esta palabra. Es como la palabra "history" pero eso no es correcto, pienso que. Es otra palabra para "cuenta"? O, es "cuenta" la palabra que significa "story"? Clase de español!**

**Alteng – Your guess is dangerously close. If this were a game of hot and cold, you'd be burning yourself.**

**Faith and Amethyst: Thanks for the comments, and I REALLY HOPE I get to read another chapter of a story (be it a one-shot about Buck, a story about Avery, or an epic BUCK UP chapter) before I leeeaaave…**

**Ch. 15: Lucky Knot**

Shapes sailed nauseatingly in front of Buck's vision and sounds blurred into an uneven smear of noise. The pressure on his neck was pitiless, overpowering his urge to fight back and sending his mind into a hazy void. He knew the Speaker had him, he knew Tacet was calling up at him, but he didn't know what she was _saying_, he couldn't make out her words, and he almost didn't care. Almost.

The Speaker's grip lessened slightly and his vision and hearing snapped into focus. He twisted his spine as only weasels can do, bringing his hind paws up to grab the arm, his front claws reaching to attack the wrist and fingers, trying to yank his head around and completely out of the hold. The Speaker cried out in anger and pain, grip tightening again, but Buck had a hold on the arm with all fours now and although some of the paralyzing effect returned, it wasn't as strong when his full weight wasn't dangling from the skin of his neck. He concentrated on keeping his claws attached to the Speaker as his captor yelled and tried to shake him off. Words wanted to spill from Buck's mouth but he had to think about them before he was able to shout them.

"Run, Tacet!"

The hand that gripped his scruff was shaking with force now, and if Tacet responded, Buck didn't hear it. From his convoluted angle, he saw a human child wrap his arms around Tacet and stand, staring at Buck, and his confusion increased – why wasn't she fighting to escape? After a moment, he forgot why he was confused, and an immutable numbness came over his entire body. He knew he'd let go of the arm by the sudden increased pressure on his neck again.

Things turned darker and the air thickened, churning with smoke and strange smells. The hand on his neck released him and he dropped, hitting the ground hard; it was covered in uneven, protruding ridges. A loud noise above him, and when he finally brought himself to his feet, there was something preventing him from straightening his spine all the way. The Speaker was fussing around with something above him but he couldn't see what it was in the dim light.

He was in a cage. It was made of bone, pieces lashed together with no rhyme or reason, a dense web. He could hear muffled shouting, demanding, and the Speaker answered, rushing away and disappearing. The shouting continued, but as if from a great distance and underwater. Buck knew he must be in the Speaker's shelter. He had to get out. He had to find Tacet, she'd been taken somewhere.

The back of his neck burned as he craned around to see how the cage was fastened. The human had bound the top to the sides by winding a long bundle of sinew and brained hide around their edges, tying it off, and then had attached it to an anchor – a large shell filled with rocks. It was too far away for Buck to reach to untie. The angle of the cage prevented him from being able to get at the bindings with his teeth, and he knew his claws would be useless. Weasel claws were meant for scratching, not tearing through material as tough as hardened sinew.

A quick inspection of the cage told him that escape may just be impossible. The Speaker must have spent a good amount of time on its construction – every joint was sound, every binding had dried and shrunk into immovable tightness. No gaps were large enough for him to squeeze through.

"Tacet!" he yelled, and cried out in frustration. This couldn't happen! He'd just discovered she was still alive, where was she? What had they done with her? If only he'd sensed that human come up behind him, he could have attacked the Speaker and they could have run off together and she could explain what she'd meant by _You're not Buck_…

"I _am_ Buck," he muttered to himself, and started testing each irregular bar to his cage, tugging and pushing in the hopes that they'd crack. What had she meant by that, anyways? Did she think he was someone else? Had he changed enough since she'd last seen him that she no longer recognized him for who he was? He certainly recognized _her_. It was her sharply defined features, her fine, pointed snout, the pale spots that ran all the way up her neck onto her cheeks.

_What if I never see her again?_ he thought frantically, and felt a touch of panic start to set in, like how it had been in that cave not-so-long-ago, running away from who-knew-what. It would all be worth it if he could just save Tacet, but he couldn't escape, he couldn't get _out, _and these white bones, these cold, icy bars wouldn't budge, he couldn't move them, they didn't care about Tacet and Buck _hated_ them.

_Don't go there_, he pleaded with himself, trying to slow his breathing and bring his heart back down to earth, reel his mind back to where it belonged.

But these bones. This cage! This smoke-filled room that smelled of burning and sour time, this white dust that clung to his fur like a disease, the little fire that cast monstrous, dancing shadows on the walls…

A beam of fresh light fell into the room and he jumped, staring at the door to the shelter, dreading the return of the Speaker. But only a small corner was lifted up, and only a small head was pushed through – Tacet!

He wanted to shout her name but his breath wouldn't come, so he pressed his face to the wall of the cage and grabbed the bars in his paws as if they would keep him from falling. _Why_ wouldn't she come in? _Why_ did she look so perplexed? Didn't she love him? Didn't she feel relief that he was still alive? Had his crime been bad enough to turn his own daughter against him?

"Tacet," he finally said, finding his voice, "why didn't you run?"

"Who are you?" she asked, and the question made sorrow bloom in his chest.

"I'm _Buck!_"

"You're not Buck."

"Why am I not Buck? What's _wrong_?" She looked so terribly sad and he wished she'd just tell him what was going on.

"I'm sorry," she said instead, her voice struggling with tears. She pulled away from the shelter and disappeared.

"No. No! Tacet! Don't leave, _please_ come back! Tell me what's going on! _Tacet!_" He could hear the panic in his own voice, but it didn't beckon back the other weasel. She'd left him.

As he stared helplessly at the spot she had vacated, the entire flap pulled back and he was confronted with the sight of the Speaker, still clutching his wicked blade, hair flying wildly and features lit up glaringly by the fire. Things were moving much too fast, Buck was still trying to get over the fact that he had a family. The grief and confusion that Tacet's behavior had just brought had not yet set in full force, but he knew it was coming. The fear and anger that he expected to feel towards the Speaker was also waiting, but he didn't have room for them inside his head so he simply stared through the human.

The Speaker approached slowly, feet swiffing over rugs that Buck knew must be made of weasel fur. He let go of the bars and took his face from the wall, trying to back into the center of the cage, but the cage was so cramped that there wasn't much he could do but watch as that face crept closer. The Speaker stopped a jump away and settled onto his haunches.

"My belief was you were dead," he informed Buck slowly, a look of wonder wandering across his features. "My belief was my soul-moon would not rest, if I could not kill the weasel that killed her. Her spirit has not rested for four turns." He reached into his shirt and drew out a necklace, a length of fiber with an intricate knot as a centerpiece. "This is our soul-knot," he explained. "It keeps us from parting. Even when kill." His fingers fondly traced the outline of the knot. Buck wondered if the Speaker's grief over the loss of his loved one had driven him mad. He wondered if he should be able to relate to the human.

"It is a strong knot. It is strong through many turns. I ask it for help not many suns past and my soul-moon speak. She speak, 'have hope'. Now comes the soul-eating weasel. It is a strong and lucky knot." He spent another moment gazing at it, mesmerized. Buck couldn't help but feel bad about what he'd done; maybe he'd had a reason, maybe he hadn't, but if he hadn't murdered, then his family would be alive, he wouldn't be in this mess, and this Speaker wouldn't be wracked with grief that had pushed his reality off-kilter. Not that Buck felt all that much sympathy for the human; it was easy to see by looking around that he'd done many unspeakable things to many creatures. But would he have committed these acts if he hadn't been so angry at Buck?

The Speaker put the knot away, and when he looked back at Buck his eyes had lost their placated sheen.

"Now the soul-eater weasel will take her place and she will sleep. They sing that weasels dance on the shores between the underworld and this world. I will make you falter and fall." His words echoed surreally in Buck's mind and for a moment, it seemed obvious that he was dreaming. It was too weird to be reality. But then, he _was _insane. He didn't have to be dreaming for things to get weird. The Speaker stood and walked to a rough table. He continued talking, his tone absent and listless.

"I speak to animals, speak, 'take the weasel here not cut'. I wished your skin for me to use." He looked over his shoulder and gave Buck a disapproving glare. "But, see you are cut. The skin is hurt. So grey herd did not get safety, as promise." So _that _was why Bronks had been so insistent that Buck kept himself clean. In hopes that his wounds wouldn't present themselves as obviously. Unfortunately for the shovelmouths, the Speaker hadn't approved. Did that mean the Speaker wouldn't be skinning him?

Not that it mattered. Apparently he was still going to be killed.

"But I take what is given," chirped the human, turning around. In his hands he held two tools of bone, each gleaming in the fire light, each impossibly sharp. Buck's heart leapt in surprise and he tried not to twitch away in fear. If the Speaker wanted to skin him alive, well then, Buck was going to take some human skin with him. The Speaker crouched down to Buck's level again. "I take what is yours."

The way he had said it – his voice was wracked with a terrible seriousness – gave Buck a feeling of overpowering dread. _I take what is yours._ The Speaker stood and strode purposefully from the tent.

_I take what is yours._

There _had _to be a way out of this thing.

Buck started another search, sure he'd missed the elusive all-important detail the first time through. There was a timer counting down the seconds in his head, and if he couldn't get out by the time it stopped, something awful was going to happen. His paws ran over every bone, every strip of binding, looking for cracks and weaknesses. His body screamed as he put all his strength into pushing against his cage, but it might just be the last thing he'd ever do, and he was willing to leave his own skin behind if it meant squeezing through one of these holes. None of them would admit his head, though.

Throwing his shoulder at the wall, the cage tipped onto its side. This did nothing but twist the bindings that lead to the rock-and-shell anchor. If he kept tipping the cage, he could get to the anchor and empty it of rocks, thus allowing him to… to…

That would get him nowhere. He needed to get out of the _cage_. The knots tying the bindings to the shell were complicated, but given enough time he'd be able to undo them. But then he'd have to untie the ones actually on the cage door, and he couldn't reach those ones from his angle.

_Come on, come on, come on_, he thought. He was running out of time. The Speaker could return at any moment. Looking around desperately, he caught sight of a fragment of bone lying at the base of the wood table. There was a chance he could use that to cut some bindings. First he'd have to get the rocks out of the shell so he could even get over to the table. He didn't have time for this, but he had no other option.

The flap opened again and he whirled to face it, dreading that the Speaker had already returned and would be carrying…

Buck froze. It was Tacet.

He felt as if he was dealing with a particularly shy butterfly that kept taking off whenever he wanted to talk to it. He wasn't sure if he should beg her to stay and say something, or if that would cause her to leave again. She took a few steps towards him warily and let the flap shut behind her. After a moment she came further in, almost past the small fire. Buck once again pressed his face to the bars.

"Please don't leave again," he said quietly. Her face became even more miserable-looking and he feared he'd already overstepped it. Instead she took a few more steps forward.

"What do you remember?" she asked. Out of all the things she could have said.

"I remember your name."

"And I remember yours. Your name is not. Don't you remember?"

"My name isn't Buck?"

"It's not Buck. It's not."

"Then what is it?" he asked, superbly confused at her manner of speaking to him.

"It's _not_. Your name is not. Like a knot in a tree or in a piece of fiber. Your name is Knot."

"Knot?" he asked. She was watching him, waiting for a reaction. "But… that's just not _right_."

"You're Buck's son. And you're my brother." She let her brother try to process the information. The fire crackled and gave her fur a deeply orange hue, but still, he would never mistake her for anyone else but Tacet. He loved her, whoever she was to him. But… much as it didn't match with what he'd always thought as his reality, he was seeing that she couldn't possibly be his daughter. She was… yes, she was his sister. Tacet, his sister. Tacet and Wellspring, his two sisters. Buck, his…

That still seemed weird. Buck, his father.

"What was mom's name?"

"Rosemal." Of course it was. Rosemal. The very name brought memories back.

"Is she alive? What about Wellspring?"

"I'm the only other one. You and mom and dad and Wellspring disappeared the day dad murdered the woman." She spoke with restraint but he could sense her deep emotions were dangerously close to surfacing.

"What's wrong?"

"I just… you don't… Knot, I missed you." Finally, her eyes were gleaming in the dancing firelight. "I missed… everybody. And I wanted to see you all again, but at the same time, knowing that this Speaker was here, waiting, I didn't…" she stopped, unable to continue, trying to bite off a sob.

He reached his paws through the bars, not trusting himself to speak either. She came to the cage and leaned into it, and he reached around her shoulders and embraced her. He could feel her shoulders shaking, and after a moment she put her paws through the gaps in the cage and laid them on his shoulders. He still didn't understand her behavior, why she had said _I'm sorry_, why she was acting so distant. But that didn't seem very relevant right now.

Her paws slipped around his back and he closed his eye, wishing the bones between them would disappear. He wished a lot of things would disappear. His greatest wish was that Tacet was safe and that he was safe and that they'd never set foot in this shelter or heard a human speak before. But if he opened his eye, all he would see was the gleaming whiteness of polished bone and the darkness of the shelter, and the sadness on his sister's face, and everything would be watery behind a film of tears. He hugged her tighter and she pressed herself to the cage wall, her body hitching.

"I-I can't…" she tried to say, voice strained with weeping. He loosened his embrace, trying to catch sight of her face. She would not raise her chin. "Can't help you."

Coldness hit him in the chest.

"Why not?"

"Look." Her voice became stronger as she let go of him, and pulled out of his grasp. The coldness grew. "Look at this place. Look what I'm standing on. Look at… your cage. This dust. You heard him talk. You heard his anger and his passion and you saw his madness." Her eyes pleaded with him to understand what she was saying, but he couldn't imagine what she was getting at.

"His anger has made him do terrible things. I don't know exactly what dad did but the Speaker thinks it's unforgiveable. His vendetta has only grown throughout the years. I know, I've been here. He had me with him, he took me to the humans the day his love was murdered. I've watched him, his hunt. He has made his life into a search for the one who killed her and he takes his anger out on any weasel he can find. And Knot, he thinks that you're the murderer."

He hadn't even had the chance to realize what his actual name meant. He wasn't the real murderer. He was the son that had stood by to see it happen. Everyone had been wrong. But Tacet… couldn't help him? He watched her, waiting.

"And I… I don't know how to say this. I'm sorry. I'm just so sorry. I can't help you. It's even worse now because you're not _him_, you're Knot, you didn't do it. But I can't," she insisted, as if arguing with herself. "You have to understand. He'll keep killing if he doesn't-" She stopped suddenly, as if horrified to say the next few words.

"If he doesn't think he's killed Buck," he finished for her. She merely stared at him.

She was going to let him die.

_It makes sense. End the killing. This is the only way it will be done._

_But I didn't do it._

_You don't have a family anymore. It doesn't matter._

_I have a family. I have Tacet._

_She wants you to sacrifice yourself. Do what she wishes._

_I don't want to die. Not this way._

_He'll keep killing. More deaths in your name._

_Not this way._

"Please," he asked, hating himself for doing this to her, hating the fact that he was begging his own newfound _sister_ to save him. "I can stop him. I can kill him. If you let me out I can kill him and we can get out of here together."

"I don't _want _to get out of here. I live here now. If you kill him, I would have to leave."

"You _live _here? What do you mean?"

"I live with a child, Knot. I was given to him by the Speaker when I first arrived here. I've grown up with him and he's… And they give me food. They protect me, better than anyone ever could out in the wilderness."

"But you're a weasel, Tacet, you _belong_ in the wilderness!" He couldn't believe what she was saying, couldn't believe what she was letting happen. "What about…" _What about your family? What about your past?_

"I don't know where I belong," she said, frustrated, "but I live here now. There's nothing for me out there." She spoke hollowly, and he thought she couldn't possibly mean what she was saying. Of course there were things waiting for her out there, there was possibility and freedom and life. "Don't try to convince me otherwise. Knot, I l-… I love you. But we separated four years ago, and even though we've come together here, I-"

"No," he pleaded, "please stop. Please don't say that."

"-I can't stop what's going to happen. There's nothing else I can do. That's why I'm sorry." Her voice rang with quiet finality and her words stabbed into his heart. He didn't know what to say, what to do. This wasn't supposed to happen with family.

The flap of the door raised, and the child stood there against the night sky. His heart beat against his ribs, his time with his sister sifting through his paws.

"Why do you think he hasn't killed you yet?" he asked her, as she started to turn around. The child watched curiously as she paused. "He's been waiting for your father to come along, Tacet. You know what he told me before you came in? 'I take what is yours'. He's going to _kill _you… so I know what it feels like to have lost someone I loved. That's the only reason you're alive right now. We have to-"

"Knot, this child loves me. The Speaker is a terrible human but this child is his son, and he would never cause his son the same kind of pain that our father caused the Speaker." She choked on her last word, and finally turned, head low. The child crouched, staring at Buck absently, and took her up in his arms. Then he stood, and turned, and left.

Tacet didn't look back at her brother. She didn't say goodbye.

The door of the shelter shut and the weasel in the cage breathed out all he'd ever wished. For once, the only things he had now were memories.

**A/N: So this chapter was a bit tricky, as you may imagine. I'd appreciate comments/criticism. And I will be disappearing mysteriously for a few days, and may not update until next Wednesday. I'm sorry to leave the story at such an awkward moment!**


	16. Dredgings: Prelude

**A/N: Thank you to all who reviewed the last chapter. I'm now going to be a real jerk and excuse myself from replying to each of you. I just got really tired and I have to get up very early tomorrow and I'm lazy. BUT, I (obviously) read all the reviews, and they ALL made me ever so happy and they all made me smile and they all had rather insightful comments and different ways of looking at things and points that were mentioned that I appreciate hearing. If you reviewed last time, then yes, I'm talking about YOU. Thank YOU. You are wonderful, and you deserve reciprocation and amazing muffins, neither of which I now give you, sadly. :( **

**Ch. 16: Dredgings: Prelude **

Things started resurfacing, disturbed from their uneasy slumber by sudden quaking. They bubbled and popped. They demanded attention. And as far as the one-sighted weasel was concerned, they were all that was left of him.

His earliest memory was of his father, Buck, scolding him. It had been about something really small, something that shouldn't have mattered so much. Sneaking up on his sisters or something, he'd barely just opened his eyes for the first time. But father was still very mad. His paw had cuffed Knot in the ear and then batted him to the ground…

"_Manners_, Knot," he'd snarled roughly.

"Buck," said mother's voice, "calm down. It's nothing to get upset about."

"Have you been listening to anything I've said since the boy was born, Rosemal? If we don't catch it early he's going to end up being another outcast."

"You're being so harsh, though…" They had argued then, and it had gotten loud. Knot hadn't understood most of their words but he had understood that they were angry and frustrated and he had known it was because of him. His sisters had laughed down at him and bounded off, happy he'd been punished for his crime. Knot was a bit beyond being sorry he'd done it. A much deeper form of guilt had been planted in his head. The seed was sown and nourished as the weeks and months passed. He grew a bit, and learned a lot. Out of necessity he learned to pay close attention to his father. Knot grew keenly aware that his sisters could get away with many things that he himself could not. They could chase each other wildly up and down trees, they could tear across the hills to go visit the shovelmouths.

Knot had the distinct impression that they were only allowed to do that because his father's attention was so trained on keeping Knot in line that he failed to follow what his own daughters were doing.

Buck was a nervous weasel, and an angry one. He talked sharply and often about justice and rights, and about his ancestors. He lectured Knot on manners and norms and how to be civil. Responsibility and respect, courtesy and awareness. Buck breathed down his neck whenever Knot wanted to do something by himself or with his sisters. Rosemal, his mother, would try to speak out for her young son but Buck's frustration would easily slip into uncalled for anger, despite his own teachings about manners and civility.

Sometimes his anger would erupt into long, unhinged rants that he directed at nobody in particular. Knot heard a lot of them, though. From them he learned that weasels were creatures that other animals didn't respect. Male weasels were thought to be slippery, scheming, dishonest and untrustworthy. Buck, already a bit unstable, had lived a disadvantaged life because of the stigma that came with being what he was. Female weasels, on the other hand, were 'sweet' and 'upright', or so went the stereotype.

Rosemal's first litter had made Buck exceptionally hopeful and fearful. His greatest wish was for a litter of daughters. Daughters might bring him and his family some respect. He had been relieved, then, when the first kit had been a female. He had named her Wellspring, because she had brought him hope. The next had also been a female, and he had named her Tacet because she would be his quiet, polite daughter, not a rowdy, percussive son.

The third kit was a male, and the last two were stillbirths. Buck named the last child Knot. He never said why he'd used that name but as Knot got older, he came up with many possible meanings behind his name. None of them made him feel any better about being born a male.

Inadequacy had been the foremost mental state of Knot's childhood above ground. His father was simply too fearful of what his son would do if left to his own devices. Not that Knot _wanted_ to get into trouble. He spent his days terrified that he'd do something bad, something to anger his father.

He gained respite from his father's attention when the Speaker showed up. Knot didn't understand what was going on with the humans, what she was doing to get the other animals so wrapped around her finger, or why his father was so furious about it. The topics of his rants slipped into self-respect and 'how things should be' and what was natural and unnatural. He compared the animals' attitudes towards humans and weasels and he pointed out perceived hypocrisies. He watched the Speaker interact with the animals and he would point at it and tell Knot exactly why he disapproved. He was usually so imperiously furious that he would forget how young his son was. As much as Buck wanted Knot to understand what he was saying, Knot simply couldn't comprehend his father's thoughts. As interactions between the Speaker and the animals increased, Buck's mental stability seemed to be thrown further off-kilter, rendering him even more difficult to follow.

Knot was a few months old when Tacet convinced him to go for a run with her.

"Knot, come on, I want to show you something," she whispered.

"What is it?" he asked. His father was off hunting, and if they were quick enough, they'd be able to get back without Buck knowing they'd been gone.

"I'll tell you along the way! Come on!"

"Just a minute, you young rip," Rosemal said. Tacet whirled around, caught unawares. "Where is it you're bringing your brother?"

"Oh. Just… Down the valley. Don't worry, Mom, I won't get him into trouble, I know how Dad is." Then she bounded off. Well, Knot figured, why not? Father trusted _her_ not to get into trouble. He should too, then. He followed as fast as his short legs could carry him and they ran for quite a while. They went down the valley, towards the other animals, which made Knot a little nervous. When finally they stopped, they were by themselves in a wooded area.

"Have you seen the Speaker?" she asked him.

"From a distance."

"Want to _talk _to her?" Her eyes glinted mischievously, and she gestured through the woods to where he knew a small pond sat. He peered at it, and gasped. There she was, the Speaker, not a dozen bounds away!

"Tacet, are you _insane_? You don't _talk_ to her, it's unnatural!"

"Oh come on, she's nice! I told her I'd let her meet you yesterday."

"You _what_?" he squeaked, paw flying to his mouth. "If Dad found out what you did he'd skin you alive! We're not supposed to get close to humans, they're dangerous!" His sister rolled her eyes and punched him lightly on the shoulder.

"Knot, you are _so _sheltered. Come on, have some fun. She's perfectly nice."

"No, I can't, Dad will-"

"Fine. But _I'm _going." Turning, she started hopping off towards the pond.

"Wait! Tacet, stop!"

"Better come and protect me!" Panic had risen in his chest and his heart was fluttering. He followed, feeling obligated to watch over her, knowing Dad wouldn't want her near the human. He wished he could run back to get Buck himself but it was too far away. He tripped over a root and caught himself, his adrenaline spiking, and kept running. Tacet had pulled far ahead of him.

Oh, who was he kidding? He wouldn't be able to protect her. She was faster, stronger, bigger, older by a few seconds. (Those few seconds, she had made sure he knew, made all the difference.) He simply hoped nothing would go wrong, and if it did, maybe he'd be able to yell loud enough for his father to hear…

Tacet had reached the pond, and Knot stumbled to a halt before he hit the edge of the trees. There was the Speaker, swishing a piece of woven material around in the water. For a human, she wasn't too ugly. Unremarkable, though. He stared, fascinated, never having seen a human so close before. Tacet was approaching, and now the Speaker looked up and smiled at the little weasel.

"Hello," the Speaker had said, shocking Knot to the core. Humans speaking seemed so very strange. "Little silence. Little Tacect."

"Hi, Speaker," Tacet had chirped.

"I have brought my soul-sun with me now. He sits across." The human pointed, and Knot turned to see another human on the other side of the pond, getting up from his perch on a rock. He was coming around to them. Knot felt his shoulders go tense. "Is your brother brought?"

"Yeah, I brought him. He's being shy, though. Hey Knot, come on! Come meet them!"

Knot felt paralyzed with fear. The Speaker was looking straight at him now, how could she see him? Wasn't he hidden in the shadows? He ducked behind a tree and the human laughed.

"Quiet one is afraid."

"He's afraid of _everything_," Tacet had sighed. Knot slowly looked around the trunk of the tree. The male human had come around the whole way and was staring at Tacet with amusement. He said something in the unintelligible human tongue to the Speaker, and she smiled, nodding, also looking at Tacet. He crouched and held out his hand to her. Tacet came to him, sniffing curiously.

And then he'd grabbed her and stood. Knot's muscles turned to stone and fear gripped him.

Tacet let out a surprised squeak and struggled, and the Speaker stood up, giving the other human a look of question. She asked him something, and he responded cheerfully. Buck's mind reeled, torn between taking the time to run to his parents or going in himself. The male human smiled and held Tacet out to the Speaker, who immediately took her carefully, looking a bit unsure. Then the male human disappeared quickly into the woods, holding up one finger as he went, as if to say 'wait'. Tacet was trying to get down from the Speaker's grasp, and the Speaker was making no move to put her down.

That was when Knot's father had shot out of the woods, bounded across the clearing, and launched himself at the Speaker. Knot hadn't even heard him approach. The Speaker fell backwards into the water, Buck snarling savagely and attacking her neck. It took an alarmingly short amount of time for the water to start to swirl with pink, and then red, and the Speaker was drowning and choking and flailing and clawing but Buck would not relent.

Tacet was free now as the Speaker tried to push Buck off. Knot finally pulled himself out of hiding and sprinted towards his sister, wanting to help her and prove his worth to his father, but as he left his cover, the male human returned. His eyes were wide as he took in the scene. Buck looked up to see who had arrived and immediately left the Speaker's body, thrashing sluggishly, and made for the shore –

Tacet wasn't where Knot had thought she would be. Her voice cried out for help and he looked up, saw the bag that the human carried, knew she'd been taken. He froze, wondering what his father would do.

His father, dripping with water and blood, pushed Knot out of the way.

"Into the woods," he had growled. Knot lurched to the cover of the brush, breath wheezing in and out, saying _no, no, no_, hearing Tacet's wailing from inside the bag.

Knot couldn't decide who looked angrier, his father or the human. They both looked fit to slaughter a pack of sabertooths. His father darted behind the human and shot up his legs, his back, tried to bite down on his neck. The human cried out, swung his fist, managed to dislodge the weasel and throw him to the ground. Now the human had produced a hatchet, and when Buck sprung up at him again he swung the weapon in a brutal arc and caught Buck across the face.

"Soul-eater," he shouted, in a thick, broken accent, and swung again. Buck dodged out of the way unevenly, almost overbalancing, and rushed to the edge of the woods to where Knot was. His father snatched him up by the neck and sprinted into the woods, breathing raggedly through a mouthful of skin and fur. A voice floated back to them, calling out furiously, but it was fading. Knot couldn't quite believe what had just happened, and the woods passed by in lunging blurs under his paws. When they reached their den, Buck had thrown his son to the ground and called out for Rosemal and Wellspring.

"We're leaving," Buck yelled. "Rosemal, Wellspring, let's go!"

"What's wrong, dear?" Rosemal asked.

"We don't have time for questions. Come on!"

"Where's Tacet?"

"Tacet is dead." A resounding silence resulted from his statement, and Knot's parents stared at each other. Rosemal's face hardened and she turned away first, urging Wellspring to hurry. Then they were all running, Buck telling them to go faster, faster, towards the outcrop in the next valley over.

Knot didn't know why the birds were whirling so close over their heads, or why there were so many shouts at them as they shot through the woods and the fields. He didn't understand why one herd actually started chasing them, or why his father kept saying _to the cave, the cave, run run run!_ And why had he said that Tacet was dead? They had heard her crying from within the bag.

The fractured family met the cave with gasping breaths and Knot stumbled down into it, young legs feeling like they were melting. Buck didn't let them stop, and Rosemal took up little Wellspring in her mouth. Light disappeared and they kept pushing down, blindly following Buck's trail as he felt ahead.

The Speaker's blood-spattered body writhed weakly before Knot's eyes. His sister's desperate voice echoed through his head.

That had been the first bad thing.

It got worse, he knew. He wanted to put a lid on everything that was coming back now, but he had no lid, and nothing to open his eye for. The memory didn't stop, and he watched it come with resigned trepidation.

The stagnant swamp had sunken deep, pushed to profound depths by turbulent currents. More bubbles, more debris.

**A/N: Did not enjoy writing this chapter, it felt so bland and text-bookish. But, it's kind of important. Had to get it out. Sorry about the bad verb tenses. When it comes to flashbacks I just start hating the word 'had'. **


	17. Dredgings: Imbroglio

**A/N: Buckwild12, thanks for the message! I'm so happy you like the story! And I heartily approve of your name. **

**Alteng, thanks again for your critical review. I was a bit concerned that it wouldn't tie in very well with the rest of the story, so that was good to hear from you.**

**Perxio, thank you, as always, for the review! You always type how you reacted to the story and it's always quite interesting to read. **

**Amethyst Dragonrider, thanks again for the review! And I totally just ran into Avery on DA. I was like, huh, that weasel looks familiar… in a mind's-eye sort of way… Just like I imagined him! **

**Lina-Shan – Gracias, otra vez! Sus comentarios siempre me dan una sonrisa. Y aquí tenemos capítulo 17, después de demasiado tiempo... … **

**Ch. 17: Dredgings: Imbroglio **

In his head, they had been running from the surface for years, winding through caves of eternal night, hitting dead ends, backtracking, utterly lost. It couldn't have been more than a day or two but when one is blind and lost, time can do strange things to the mind.

Buck wouldn't answer Rosemal's questions about where they were going, what they were running from. He simply pushed ahead, and the rest followed out of necessity. At one point Rosemal put Wellspring down, unable to bear her weight anymore, and then they moved slower. Knot's mind was trying to process what had happened and what it meant, what his role in it was, but running through the dark down these caves pushed away the thoughts.

Some time after Rosemal had put Wellspring down, the ground beneath their paws changed. It had been slick with moisture for the most part, but now it felt carved up sharply, uneven and potholed. He had been trying to keep up behind his father but his hind paw caught against a sharp ridge and pitched him into the jagged stone. He tried to get up but a brutal pain exploded up from his paw a second before Wellspring bumped into him. His sister gave a surprised squeak and Rosemal, who had been bringing up the rear, stopped before running into both of them.

"What's going on?"

"Hurt my paw," Knot mumbled, trying not to let any weakness into his voice.

"Buck," his mother called, "Stop a moment, will you?" The sound of Buck's frantic movements paused ahead of them, and slowly made their way back. "Can you walk on it?" she asked Knot. _Yes_, he wanted to answer. But it hurt so much, he knew he wouldn't be able to get far, not at the pace they were going.

"No, not really." He could hear her feeling her way to him, and then her paw touched his face. She wrapped it around his shoulders and pulled him towards her, and he leaned against her, worn out.

"Buck," she said, and in her voice there was finality and determination. Knot became acutely aware of how much he loved his mother.

"What?"

"Tell me what's going on."

"It doesn't matter what's going on. I'm trying to keep you safe."

"You told me my daughter is dead. Now don't you dare try and tell me that what happened doesn't matter." Her controlled grief echoed dully against the walls around them, and was followed closely by a brief but exquisitely bitter silence.

"Fine," he said hollowly. "Fine." And he told her of how he'd lunged down the hill after Rosemal had pointed where Knot and Tacet had gone, and what he'd found at the bottom. Knot cowering weasel-like behind the tree (Rosemal hugged her son more fiercely) while his sister struggled in the grips of the Speaker. How he had attacked and killed to free his daughter, how the second human had taken her instead, how he'd tried to get her back but had been forced to retreat with a bloody face and a spineless son. Why they were now running from the world above. Why he was sure Tacet was dead.

Why the whole mess was ultimately Knot's fault.

Knot hadn't expected that blow, but it wasn't such a surprise. His mother merely held him protectively, mutely telling him that she wasn't accepting her husband's accusation.

"Something made these tunnels," Buck continued. "They must come out somewhere, far away from where we started. The animals there won't have heard about the Speaker or what happened, and we _might _be able to start a new life. We might be able to live without being shunned." His voice now carried a subtle anxiety, something that Knot had never heard before. He couldn't put his claw on it but it made him nervous. It made him doubt his father's word. It made the darkness press more insistently at his eyes and the stone above them seem much lower.

They were going to die down there, he knew it. Even if they wanted to go back the way they'd come, it would be impossible. They were completely lost. The thought sent a pungent dread creeping into his mind, and for the first time in his life Knot was paralyzed by an overwhelming fear of death. Abstractly, he knew that in time everything would die. But not _now_! Not like _this_! Not down in the hidden entrails of the Earth, sightless like newborns and crawling along, away from prosecution and pulled by the wild hope that the particular passage they were in would miraculously lead them back out under the sun…

Knot closed his eyes – why was he even keeping them open? – and bit back a sob. He was terrified, but determined not to let it show. It was his fault they were down there, his fault they'd had to stop. He wasn't about to let himself start acting weak. If anything, he should be the one to lead them out of this mess. But all he could do was press his face into his mother's fur and hope fiercely that the taint in his father's voice wasn't insanity.

"We'll make it there," Buck assured them. "We just have to keep moving."

"We need to rest," countered Rosemal gently. "We've been going for too long already."

"Resting isn't going to make things easier. If we don't have food, that won't matter. We should keep moving while we can."

"Knot can't keep moving, and I can't carry him."

"Knot _will _keep moving. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

"Or turns you into a nutcase," inserted Wellspring. She was usually a joker but her voice seemed a bit shaky now. Tacet had been lost to all of them, after all.

"Mind your manners, Wellspring. Knot, get on that paw. You probably just twisted it a little, and walking will help. Alright, everyone?"

Nobody objected, though Knot was sure everyone wanted to. His mother sighed and let his shoulders go.

"If it hurts too much, let me know. I can carry you."

"It's fine, mom," he replied, hating his father for telling him to walk on it. Easy for _him_ to say that. Easy for _him_ to say it was just a little twist. He felt warm blood on it and he couldn't bend it without feeling like something was going to snap. _Maybe I deserve this_, he thought bitterly. _This is what I get for being such a coward._

They started moving again, at a considerably slower pace. Knot distracted himself from the pain in his paw by becoming angrier than he had ever been in his life. It was slightly better than the helpless terror that he knew was under it. At least when he was angry he could _blame_. Even if most of the blame was on himself. He was angry at his father in a superficial sort of way, the kind of anger that he knew would be passing, even as intense as it was. Would be passing, had it not been for the likely fact that they were all going to die, very shortly. Mostly because of himself. _Why_ hadn't he tried to save Tacet? _Why_ hadn't he stopped her from going to the Speaker? He at least could have tried, but no, he'd just… hid behind a tree, after pleading uselessly. At least father had had enough courage to do something. His father might be bent on making him miserable but at least he wasn't selfish and spineless, at least he was willing to act to save someone he loved. Or try to. Now their family had had to exile themselves.

He felt completely worthless. Never had he done something to earn his father's respect or praise. Instead he'd done exactly what his father had always taught him not to do. Gritting his teeth against the pain in his paw, he moved faster to catch up with Buck. His father was right; the longer they were down here, the more time they would have to go without food. Wellspring and Rosemal, behind him, took up his pace. He could hear his sister sniffing a bit and readily took the blame for her unhappiness.

Rosemal was sniffing too, he thought, and he prepared to launch himself to a whole new level of misery, but the sound wasn't quite right. It was… further behind. And-

"Stop," he said sharply, his voice more pitiful than he would have preferred.

"Knot, we can't stop every time your paw-"

"I _heard _something," he interrupted his father, and this time Buck listened.

Something crackled down the tunnel behind them. How had he thought that was someone weeping? The sound stopped, and they listened for another moment. Then Buck shifted impatiently.

"Just loose rocks we disturbed," he said, a bit uneasily. "Let's keep moving." Knot followed his father a little closer, and kept an open ear. It didn't take long for him to start hearing the noise again, and his father kept pausing to listen. They all heard it now. There were no loose rocks in this area of this tunnel.

They were being followed.

"…Dad?" Knot asked quietly. "I think-"

"I _know_," his father whispered. Knot's anger started to slip away in the face of irrevocable horror. He grabbed at it, desperate for its protection, but it was useless. Quiet, awful, barely-audible gibbering noises made his skin crawl, made him scramble forward faster. Wellspring's sobbing had stopped and she moved at his side, Rosemal close behind them.

Knot might have felt like a coward, but he wasn't stupid. If something was stalking them from behind, it would hardly do any good running away. Either it would leave them alone or it would attack, and if it chose the latter option, they'd be fighting in the dark. An almost tangible fear was gripping Knot and forcing him forward faster, despite the burning pain in his paw, and he could hear the rest of his family moving faster too. Knot felt his father's tail whipping in front of him and he wanted to go faster, get away from that sound, but he knew his father couldn't run full-tilt, not when they couldn't see their surroundings.

"Buck, we should-" started his mother, and her voice was cut off sharply before she let out a yelp of alarm. "Buck!"

"Mom?" Knot shouted, hearing an explosion of scuffling noises not three feet behind him, feeling his father shoot past his nose, his sister clinging to his arm. "Mom!" His voice rose in distress and he wanted to help but he just couldn't _see_ –

"Knot, 'Spring, _run!_" Rosemal's voice sounded out desperately, and Knot lurched forward with his sister, both charging ahead blindly. _Not again, not again_, he thought, and stopped running a moment later.

"Knot, what are you _doing? _Come _on_!" Wellspring's voice hissed with terror and Knot wanted to go, wanted to run, but the last time he'd acted cowardly Tacet had been taken. He had to go back. He could hear his father's bellows and his mother's cries and the grunts and clackings of something unnameable back there so he started running, hoping that common sense wouldn't catch up fast enough to halt him, telling his sister to keep going.

He approached the sounds with fangs bared and claws shot, ears straining to pick up every detail. There was a pause, and he heard his parents breathing heavily off to the side, and couldn't pick up where the other beast was.

"Are you hurt?" his father whispered to his mother.

"I'll be fine. Do you think it's gone?"

"No, it's still-"

The creature bubbled a foot away from Knot's face. Thoughtlessly he leapt at it, wondering if this would be the last thing he'd ever do, and his body slammed into thick skin, long spines, ropy muscle, now it was letting off a screech and flailing around as he tried to latch his claws onto where he thought its back was. It smashed him into the rock wall, trying to dislodge him, but it only served to make him tense up and bury his claws further. Finding the neck became his sole concern, his parents' hunting lessons imbedded in his head. Did it even _have _a neck? The long spines must be where the core was, its head had to be at the top-

Knot buried his teeth, and the creature let out a shriek that made his ears lie flat, but his teeth were small and he felt as if he wasn't even piercing all of its thick, leathery hide. He tore out his teeth and clawed his way up the thrashing neck, adrenaline forcing his senses and muscles into overdrive. The head! What kind of animal _was_ this? It swung its head down and Knot clung like a limpet, searching for its eyes, its nose, any of its senses that it could be using against them. He struck out with his claws, felt something wet, and the creature shrieked again. Something sharp whipped out of the darkness and slashed across his back, and scrabbled at him, trying to dislodge him. His hind paws came loose from their hold on the thing's forehead and he swung down and hung for a moment before the sharp things lashed out again and knocked him to the ground.

His lungs were shocked into stillness for a moment by the blow and the fall. He tried to draw in the most stubborn breath of his life as he rolled away, back burning wetly, and to his feet.

"Knot!" yelled a voice down the tunnel, much further away than he thought his parents were, but it was Buck's voice and his mother must be with him! They had escaped, they had run! He wanted to call out to him but his lungs still wouldn't work and that thing was hissing and spitting and Knot didn't know if he should attack again or try to get out of there. His sister's voice was raised wildly now and he couldn't hear what she was saying but it wasn't making Rosemal very happy.

It wasn't attacking him – had he managed to incapacitate it? - and Knot's instincts were threatening to drive him insane if he didn't obey them so he allowed himself to start running towards their voices, tripping and gasping.

"Knot?" came Rosemal's voice as he approached, and he thought she might have sounded a bit faint but he didn't have time or energy to ask, so they all lunged down the tunnel together and somehow – miraculously – they could _see_. Knot could make out the shadows of his family and the looming boulders to each side of him, and could barely perceive the gradual lightening of the tunnel in front. Were they going to make it? Knot felt hope leap in his chest and as a unit they ran faster; they were almost out, and the air was fresh.

His hope was replaced by a fresh jolt of dread as that hissing sound came back to them with the pounding of feet, running from behind. As fast as they were running, as much as they flew towards the light, it was coming closer.

They rounded a bend and Knot was sure he could see the end of the tunnel. It must be night up there because it wasn't bright at all, but at least there was a bit of illumination, and he thought if only they could get out of here and reach the surface, just a few dozen yards, they'd be safe and the thing would stop chasing them.

Rosemal cried out again, and Knot knew the surface simply wasn't close enough. He skidded to a halt and whirled around. A monstrous, arcane shadow astounded his vision and there was his mother, writhing in its mouth, writhing the way a snake does when a weasel sinks its teeth into its flesh, writhing and thrashing and crying out in desperation. Knot's heart dove and he wanted to spring again but now when he could see what he was attacking –

"Keep running, Wellspring!" cried Buck's voice, and for the third time, Buck sprung before Knot's eyes. Knot fervently hoped that his father would be able to kill the monster that held his mother the way he'd killed the Speaker, but the monster lashed out with a claw and a roar.

Buck was impaled in mid-spring and thrown violently into the tunnel wall. He hit the ground and did not move.

The footsteps of the cave creature darted back into the darkness behind them, Rosemal's whimpers dying in its wake.

Knot took three running steps after them, not sure what he was about to do, before his father called him to stop. He scampered over to lean over Buck, wincing at the black patch on his father's torso.

"She's dead," he said dully. Knot was speechless, and simply stared at his father. Buck's eyes were squeezed shut, face slashed by the human's hatchet and pinched with grief. Knot wanted to say _no, she'll be fine_, but that would have been an impossible, cruel lie. The sounds of the monster had already disappeared down into the caves.

"You need to go to Wellspring. Find her."

"But you're coming too?"

"Dammit, I'm dead, are you blind?" his father snarled. "I'm dead," he continued, more quietly, and that taint became more prominent, "couldn't save Tacet, couldn't save Rosemal… Oh, Buck, Buck, Buck, what have you done, you coward…" he muttered. His eyes opened now and riveted Knot with a piercing glare. "Your wife is dead… your second daughter is lost… you're useless. Got no control, never had any grasp on reality. Or yourself. Or your family. Look at you." He regarded his son with judgment and the young weasel felt his insides tense up with involuntary guilt.

"Dad, what are you talking abou-"

"All that darkness, eh?... Could have been happy. You could have led them out of there safe and happy. Look how close we are. Look up there. There it is, there was happiness. But no, Buck, you weasel. Your wife, your wife, how could you have let her die like that…" Instead of grief on his face, his father was now piercing him with accusation, an almost relieved expression. "And your daughters. Your legacy. Both gone. Slipped through your claws because you're just… not… _strong_ enough.

"Buck," he wheezed. "You… you let that all happen. Didn't try hard enough. Where were you? Where _were _you? Too much anger, not enough control. Isn't that the mistake they all make? You old fool.

"You _find_ Wellspring," he said forcefully, "Find her and raise her and earn some respect, Buck. Got that?" They stared at each other helplessly. "And leave this old shell to die. I'm already dead. Leave me…"

He stared at the weasel on the ground. He thought of Rosemal, probably ripped apart by now – maybe being ripped apart at this very moment – and he thought of Wellspring, helpless somewhere unknown ahead of them. He was loosing, he was dying, and it was time, it really was, to leave the dying thing behind…

So he turned towards the light, such as it was. He limped up to it and stood at the threshold between out there and in here. Yes, it was night. There were no stars and there was no moon, but a strange aurora up in the sky that shone as if the sky were frozen. He listened and heard the dying one in the cave draw a breath that rattled in anguish. Something in his chest rattled and shuddered too, fueled by grief and nerves that had been twisted and stretched too far. It brought a coldness that he'd never felt, not on the most frigid of starry winter nights. _My family is gone_, he thought.

Something roared out there. It was a new world, and it was thick with the unknown and dangerous. It wanted to eat him alive, he knew it. It had already eaten two, maybe three of the others. The urge to roar furiously back at the beast in the jungle came to him but he wasn't big enough, not strong enough or courageous enough to tell this world anything. Instead a whimper escaped between his teeth. Its quietness frightened him.

"Wellspring!" he yelled desperately, and his voice sounded foreign. No response from the jungle. He called out again and stepped into the leaves. Something in his soul was tied to the cave, and the further away he stepped, the more drawn out and stretched it became, thinner and thinner, humming with tension.

**A/N: Some intentional pronoun confusion up there.**


	18. Dredgings: Nocturne

**A/N: Cabbage_Merchant, hello and thanks for reading/reviewing! Jack Sparrow, eh? I suppose the two of them share quite a number of similarities, i.e they're both swashbucklingly awesome. **

**Alteng: Yes, my thinking was that Buck Sr. was a bit delirious there at the end. I was wondering if readers would think that, or if they'd think he was just pinning all his guilt on his son because he was selfish, or what. I suppose it's a combo of many things, but principally, yeah, delirium. Thanks again for your reviews, they're so very insightful!**

**Have Faith, your reviews always make my soul happy. Thanks. Yeah, I figure those were guanlongs or what have you, but our hero certainly doesn't know what in the name of muffins they are/were. Yet. **

**Perxio, if you feel weird about liking reading Buck's insanity, I feel genuinely villainous about liking to **_**write**_** it. Heh.**

**Amethyst: Thanks again for the review! Whether he is Knot or Buck has yet to be decided! Don't have a DA account (I just lurk a lot), but that may change in the near future.**

**CurrentlyMe, you bring up an interesting point, about Buck's love for his son, or lack thereof. Yeah, Knot was his only son, but bear in mind that he didn't **_**want **_**a son. Then again, what kind of insanity would have to strike to render a father incapable of feeling love towards a son? I don't know what to say about that one, I'm afraid I don't really understand Buck Sr. myself. **

**Spaz-kun, sus palabras son muy pensativas. Pienso que comprendes bastante bien lo que Buck pensaba cuando él dijo que esas palabras a Knot! Y el nombre de nuestro héroe... el destino de su nombre es mas ser determinado, si puedo ser misteriosa...**

**.**

**Ch. 18: Dredgings: Nocturne**

Dew-damp leaves slicked his fur as he pushed through them frantically. They obscured the ground and he kept tripping, wincing at the newly-awakened pain in his hind paw. He was trying to be careful, he was trying to be measured and in control, but his limbs wouldn't function like he wanted them to. An emptiness had forced itself into his mind. The badness of what had happened and what was happening was simply too big and he couldn't live with it. The instinct to survive was stronger, however, than whatever emotions had been ransacking his mind. And so survival had taken up the helm.

It was doing a ramshackle job, though. He tripped on another root and fell headlong into a tangle of rotten branches.

"Slow down," he chided himself. "Take it easy." His voice trembled on the edge of tears. He was being so foolish, stumbling around in the dark. No way he'd be able to find Wellspring right now, even if he kept calling out.

_Up a tree_, said his instincts, and he obeyed them. The nearest tree was thicker than he was tall and he pulled himself painfully up its trunk, passing up branch after branch, in search of a canopy. Upon breaking through, he found a perch and leaned wearily against the trunk, glaring remorsefully across the top of the forest. All cast in shadow. This night was dark, darker than it should have been.

How would he know how dark a night should be? He didn't even know where he was, and that was by far not his greatest problem.

He was beyond confused. He was lost many times over. He was alone, having an identity crisis after severe emotional trauma, and doing so in the darkness of a mysterious world full of monsters and death. Bitterly, he told himself that it couldn't possibly get worse, and this time he meant it. This time there wouldn't be some ironic little storm cloud to come sit on his head and prove him wrong.

_You could be dead,_ he told himself.

_That might be an improvement,_ he replied, thoughtfully leaning over the branch and considering the great height at which he sat. But then he remembered Wellspring. He was supposed to be saving her. How selfish of him, thinking himself so lost and alone and miserable. How did he think _she _felt? She couldn't possibly be any better off… unless she were dead already…

His thoughts tumbled chaotically. They'd beaten his survival instincts into submission for the moment and he sat miserably, making no attempt to sort them out. He didn't care anymore. Which was a lie, he knew, but still. He didn't care.

He _should_, though. This was all his fault. The guilt was going to torture him until the day he died. It squeezed his heart and weighed on his head so terribly he felt like he would choke. How could he have been so stupid? So cowardly? So… thoughtless? If only he'd acted. If only he'd thought about it before he'd…

The rest of that thought became petrified before it could emerge. He would not let himself hear it. He pushed it down, down to where the weight of everything else on top of it would force it to sink. He was done thinking about himself, he didn't _want _to think about himself, whoever that was.

"The thing to do right now," he muttered, and paused, eyebrows knit. "The _smart _thing to do would be to sleep." He let what he'd said sink in, and he liked the idea. It may have been escapist, but it was the smart thing to do. Right.

A tree was possibly the least comfortable thing to sleep in that he could have found. At least this tree was. Its trunk was thick but its branches were thin and if he were to sleep, surely he would fall off. If he was going to fall to his death, he wanted it to be a voluntary choice.

He would go back to the ground. The thought of doing something, anything, suddenly seemed like a painfully laborious task. It was as if a numbing fog was trying to encroach through his ears, take over his brain and weld him into a vegetable. It crept slowly but it seemed to have somewhat of an irresistible power to it.

What was he doing? Oh yes.

Staring down into the shadows of the leaves, he decided to take his chances. The thought of sleep was becoming unbearably tempting, intoxicating. Just had to find a little place to hide from whatever was lurking down on the ground, and then he could finally just let go. Down the tree.

His hind foot slipped and he let out a surprised yelp, dangling by one paw. Bits of bark rattled down through the branches below him as he scrabbled for a hold, movements deadened by that fog. _Slow, you dummy_, he told himself, and proceeded more carefully. Going down was a ton harder than going up. It took him a painful stretch of time to be able to see the ground through all the leaves, but he was almost there then, all he had to do was –

A shadow, three shadows, slinking around the base of the tree, not four feet below him! He let out a gasp and tried to turn himself around but his dratted foot wasn't behaving properly, that stupid numbness was slowing him up, and something was snapping and hissing at his tail. He snagged the closest branch and hauled his trembling body up, crawled up to the next branch, and sat there. He glanced down.

The same kind of monster that had killed Rosemal. A new knot of guilt and terror clenched at his insides, a wave of nausea rolled through him. Not _them_. There they were, clicking furiously up at him. He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the trunk, trying to slow his breathing. There was a bloody tang in his throat from too much breath ripping in and out from fear and exertion. Those lizard things weren't going to let him down, and the fact that something was forcefully preventing him from sleeping made him even more desperate for it.

"I'm going to die," he told his eyelids. Then he opened them, and repeated the same thing to the frosty sky. There was simply no way he would survive this place. He should just stop and let that empty feeling take over. This was it. This was the end. It must be. He lowered his gaze and stared into the forest in front of him. This branch, he decided, was awful skinny. Standing up gingerly, doing his best to ignore the noises from the creatures below him (who hopped about madly, staring up at him with their mouths of needle teeth), he started edging along the branch, eyes riveted on the close branch of another tree. Perhaps he'd be able to get to it before this branch snapped under his weight and sent him tumbling to his death. Maybe.

Halfway there. The branch under his paws cracked a bit and he flinched. The monsters underneath him were going into fits, jumping ever higher. Sizing up the rest of the branch, he decided there was no way it would hold his weight if he went much further. So he crouched, clinging to the branch with all fours, coiled up his muscles, flattened his ears, and sprung. He heard the branch snap off as he left it, and he was so sure that he hadn't jumped hard enough, paws flailing out for something to grab, flailing in slow-motion – then they snagged the new branch, and he dangled for a moment before pulling himself up.

Pausing there, he tried to force his limbs to come back under his control, but his mind wasn't even strong enough to demand that his body obey. This branch was a lot steadier, and partially hid him from the things below. Not quite believing that he was still alive, he slowly crept up the trunk of this new, leafier tree, and scrambled via branch to the next tree over. The creatures didn't follow him.

Once more, he had escaped death. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. At this point, though, he wasn't feeling much of anything anymore.

He _did_ still feel the overwhelming urge to sleep. It wasn't as though he were particularly tired, it was just that the thought of his mind shutting completely down for a while was so tempting. He kept moving for a few minutes, encountering dozens of types of trees that he'd never laid eyes on before, none of which were suitable for sleeping in.

He came to a tree on the edge of a clearing and paused, letting his foot rest. Well, _almost_ a clearing. It was sparsely dotted with a few tall, thick trunks… that appeared to be branchless…

He squinted through the darkness. _No way, _he told himself. The trunks were gently curved, attached to huge lumps near the ground, which were supported by four thick pillars and _no way_ were they animals, there couldn't possibly be something alive that was this monstrous.

But there it was. Four legs… a body… a tail… something that looked suspiciously like a head, way up there on top of those tree-like necks…

He let out a squeak as he realized that one was swinging ponderously towards him from down where it had been drinking. It was moving slowly, so slowly, maybe it wouldn't eat him if he made a dash for it… or maybe if he stayed perfectly still, it wouldn't see him…

No, it must see him. It was reaching towards his branch, mouth was opening, and its white teeth stood out in all the darkness like little ice cubes in a mud pond. Ice _cubes?_ Yes, cubes. The teeth were getting closer and he couldn't move but those teeth didn't look like they were meant for tearing flesh. His thoughts were confirmed as the giant took a mouthful of leaves off the end of his branch. The branch sprung back into position and he fell to all fours, still staring at the beast, completely awestruck. It munched in what looked like sedated happiness, eyelids half-closed, pupils slightly crossed. How in the world had he never seen one of these before? How was it that they could have been stomping around all this time and not get noticed?

And geez, but if they were as stupid and slow as they looked and they were still alive, maybe there was a chance _he _could survive, too. Unless the only reason they were still alive was because there was nothing big enough that could possibly take them down.

A thunderous roar ripped through the still air and made the colossus stop in mid-chew to swing its head up and stare around suspiciously. The roar had come from what sounded like a ways off but it had still sent his fur all aspike. There was no way a sound like that could have issued from something that couldn't eat one of these guys.

The one who'd taken a chunk out of his tree went a few steps closer to the rest of its herd. The weasel stared after it, feeling the subtle shake of the ground as it moved. He stared for long moments, and the moments knitted together to form one long, timeless stretch of his life that he spent staring at sleeping long-necks. At one point he unconsciously lowered himself to the branch and lay down, paws folded under his chin.

_I won't fall asleep, I'll just rest here_, he thought, and promptly fell asleep.

His mind wasted no time in telling him that sleep would henceforth cease to be something he'd ever feel like doing again.

Opening his eyes, there was a moon now. It was full and it was silhouetting the outline of another weasel, completely cast in shadow, standing above him on his branch. He started to get up, wondering who it was, but the other weasel took a pawful of his ear and pressed his face into the branch.

"Buck," he growled, voice almost familiar, "This is your fault. Don't you go feeling sorry for yourself, don't you dare hide anymore…" The other weasel wrenched his paw sideways and the one he'd called Buck tumbled headfirst from the branch, and he fell, fell, he was going to hit the ground and break every bone in his body –

What was that sound? Hissing and snapping, and his body smashed into the ground, like he knew would happen, and there above him stood two of those terrible spiked monsters. The woman Speaker was wedged between the jaws of one of them, thrashing and shrieking, and then suddenly it was Rosemal, lovely Rosemal, writhing like a snake. He tried to get to his feet, maybe if he acted fast enough he could save her!

The butt of a hatchet swung out of the darkness and caught him across the chest, flinging him to the ground again. It pinned him there, even as he tried to push it away. The other human, the male, was holding the other end in one hand, and a bag with the other. Something was moving in the bag, and its bottom was soaked in something dark that he could smell from where he was, a smell like iron and earth. The male leaned down until his grief-stricken face was a foot from his own, and then he opened his mouth, and he spoke the word _THINK_, and then _ACT._

The hatchet handle flipped him away and the male disappeared, with the two monsters following. He tried to sit up, wanting to chase after them, save Rosemal and Tacet and maybe even the female Speaker, but a crippling pain in his chest forced him back to the ground. Staring into the branches, he caught sight of a tall shadow. There was that weasel. The one who had pushed him off the branch. Glaring down at him imperiously, blocking the moon.

His own cry woke him up.

Claws dug into the bark of the branch, pressing himself to it as if the slightest breeze might knock him off. Looking to the sky, he didn't see a moon, and he didn't see another weasel. Didn't hear those spiked monsters. No screams of pain, no tortured crying. Except his own. He didn't know what else to do but weep. The numbness had disappeared with sleep and left all his emotions and memories raw and exposed.

His family was _dead_. It was _his _fault. He could have prevented it. But he hadn't, and now see where he'd ended up. The chest pain he'd felt in his dream had stayed with him into the waking world and he curled against the trunk, trying to force it from his body but it wouldn't go away and the hitching breaths he was taking was making it worse.

_I'm so lonely,_ he cried in his head, and thought about the words only after they'd come. The revelation that he was, in fact, completely alone and isolated now made everything exponentially worse, and was so packed with fright that it almost forced his grief from his system. Instead it simply crammed itself into his already overflowing mind and he kept weeping, having no idea, no _clue_ as to what he should do now. He simply didn't know. He couldn't imagine. He was trying to hold on to a rope that held the weight of all he'd ever known and loved, but it was in a bottomless ocean and it was going to drown him. It was pulled so _taut_.

What was to be done?

Sleeping was certainly not the answer. He never wanted to fall asleep again. He wanted to stop crying because it was starting to hurt his face and his chest but whenever a sad thought went through his head, and sad thoughts were all he had, he'd fall into another helpless fit of sobbing.

The distorted idea came to him that if he just kept crying, sooner or later he'd have to stop. Sooner or later his body would realize that it was pointless.

Strangely, once he'd settled for that plan, he felt much better, even though his weeping continued completely unrestrained. It was a bit like waiting for a gaping wound to stop bleeding. Just a matter of time. The only thing to do after that was try not to tear it open again.

**.**

**A/N: And with the conclusion of this shamelessly depressing and angsty chapter, my dear reader, this thing is officially novel-length. I can say I wrote a novel over the summer! And I wouldn't have done it if you punks hadn't read the entirety of these 40,000 + words and reviewed. You're all awesome and deserve pocket-Bucks! Like a pocket-book but a lot more fun. (Faith and Amethyst, you both now deserve two pocket-Bucks.)**


	19. Dredgings: Requiem

**A/N: Perxio, yes indeed that 'I'm so lonely' was a reference! Although I didn't realize it at first. But then I did, and I decided it was kind of appropriate. **

**Amethyst, thanks! So this RPG that you and Faithers are writing, is it Ice Age, or something different? I always like a good sad story.**

**Alteng: Are you thinking too much? Well, I think you're thinking more than I am, in that I can't really confirm or refute any of your theories, all of which are rather interesting and quite possible. I wish I had a better handle on our hero's mental state, but sadly, this is not the case. It's kind of a problem of mine. I can say, however, that yeah, you're right about the Speaker being a symbol of guilt. If he'd stopped Tacet, his father wouldn't have had to kill the Speaker, thus making exile and the resulting deaths unnecessary. **

**I seriously considered doing the next chapter about the present, like you said, but ultimately I decided to finish the dredgings. I thought it would break any flow there might be if I pulled the story away from the middle of his memories. But this is the last flashback chapter, I swear! And my, but a Buck beanie without the dagger? I can't say I approve of that, poor Buck… **

**Spaz-Kun, Lo siento para las lágrimas! Muchas gracias para la inspiración, sus comentarios son maravillosos. I always wonder over the intelligence of creating sad stories about 'kid' movies. Everything is so very different and OOC and completely not in the same tone as the original work… Y así, soy muy feliz que lo quiere, en vez de fruncir a toda la angst y la tristeza.**

**Cabbage_Merchant, your name makes me wish I had a cabbage. Bah. As for Diego and Crash, I'm very sorry to say that I decided to finish the memory-chapters first. But yes, believe me. our hero is pretty excited for them to bust him out too. **

**Lina-Shan: Por favor no se discúlpe! Comprendo que la mayoría de las personas en la tiene otro vive para vivir. Y gracias, muchas gracias para sus comentarios!**

**Ch. 19: Dredgings: Requiem**

He rose from a stupor with the morning light. The rest of the night had passed quickly once he'd become still, and he'd fallen into another numb trance. His awareness now rekindled, he took a moment to marvel at his surroundings; it became apparent, now, that this place was an underground world, a hollow in the earth, with a ceiling of ice and a perpetual tropical climate.

He dismissed the impossibility of this scenario. Obviously, the giant creatures plodding around in the clearing before him were a testament that this place was stable enough to support even the most gargantuan forms of life.

And my, but he was hungry. And thirsty. And sore. And sad –

He pulled a curtain between 'sore' and 'sad'. Sadness was behind him. Sadness was waiting for him to turn around so it could arrest his vision and yank him down and drown him.

He very carefully danced around that thought. Hungry, thirsty, sore. Someone else was sad. Not _him_, though. Time to climb down from this tree. Careful of his hind paw and listening for any strange noises , he descended the trunk and lowered himself to the ground. The shadows were still deep and slanting, dew had set everything all aglitter, and the air was crisp and undisturbed.

This, he thought, was the kind of peace that lies in wait for you to let your guard down. Then it steps on your head.

He narrowed his eyes, looking right and left.

Wasn't he supposed to be looking for something? Yes, yes, someone named Wellspring. _Oh, Wellspring_. Sadness tapped on his shoulder as he thought about the name. He knew who she was, he _did_, she was his –

Just someone. Someone he was looking for. It was quite important that he find her, for whatever reason. Whatever reason. His mind repeated 'whatever reason' desperately, trying to escape that spiraling sensation that was grabbing at him. Part of him smiled nervously and said,

_Thought I left you up there. _And the other part said,

_You idiot, stop smiling! Don't you remember _anything?

_I hope not. Now, aren't you thirsty?_

That smiling, forgetful part of him _did_ seem to be onto something. The other part shut up for the moment, or was otherwise rendered mute. He turned to the jungle and slipped between the leaves, pausing and listening and creeping. Tripping, because his foot was quite stiff, and frightening up some truly dreadful insects, the likes of which could have eaten him in two bites, had they wanted to. He narrowly avoided being sighted by a large, scaly, club-tailed creature, and the route he took to avoid that encounter brought him straight to a river. This solved his thirst problem, and the little fish (with surprisingly sharp ear-ripping teeth) he managed to splash out of the water solved his hunger problem, and the icy waters very temporarily numbed his whole body, dumbing down the pain in his foot and his ear.

Throughout the rest of the day he teetered precariously on the razor's edge of what lay before him and what lay behind. He wanted so badly to disappear into the jungle and just live _there_, to learn from it and let it take over his mind and become part of it. But then, leaving behind what had happened seemed like a sacrilege, not to mention doing so was proving to be nearly impossible. As hard as he trained his mind to veer away from those thoughts, it would always, always, always return, like a moth to a flame. His greatest fear was that he would become engulfed.

Of course, he would lie himself out of believing that one. His greatest fear, he'd say, was whatever it was that would make that terrible, echoing roar. It must be the biggest, meanest monster that this world held.

The first day was a struggle, in every sense of the word. With his surroundings, with his body, with his mind. The day after that was no better, nor was the next one. With each passing sundown, the bubble of doubt would grow bigger and he'd have to think it back to a reasonable size once the sun had risen and cast its fingers through the icy ceiling of his home. Sleep was one of his biggest demons, and almost without fail it would send him back into the raw memories that he was trying so hard to bury. Instead of sleep he would try to fall into a mindless trance and let the night slip by like that, but he didn't have much control over what his body and mind decided to do when they were tired.

But time was on his side. Days passed, and weeks passed, and the jungle hadn't killed him yet. Neither had he fallen to his death in that big, smelly abyss, or been incinerated by the great lava flow, or eaten by the giant, toothy monsters that liked to dwell there with their newborns. His nightmares tried desperately to drag him back to who he was but he began to tell himself that they weren't based off of memories, that they weren't chips of his past, and that perhaps they were all another kind of fable, trying to terrify him into learning about awareness and loss and control.

Instead he learned about survival. Which dinosaurs wanted to eat him and which ones just wanted to stare curiously. Which ones not to ride, which ones were good for fast transit. Whose prints were whose. Where all the fish were. Where all the flying monsters dwelt. Which plants were useable, edible, medicinal, and which plants were carnivorous. How to escape attackers and where to hide at night and what to think about when his mind would start to wander too close to the flame.

He took to walking with his back straight and leaping at his prey from the front. He did not sneak out of habit. Sometimes he planned things meticulously and sometimes he went flying into situations in full improvisational mode, but being careful became second nature to him.

Lots of time passed. He didn't count the days. He counted the number of young tyrannosaurus rexes and how many feet of vines he needed to create a proper rope. He talked to the stegosauruses, who always gave him a glazed stare, and he talked to the pineapples, who always regarded him as if he weren't good enough for them. He hoped that someday he'd be able to impress the pineapples. But he didn't count the days, and he didn't talk to himself about what had happened.

Days since when? What did he _think _had happened? He'd always been here, hadn't he? Ever since he was a wee kit?

He was a bit taller now. He was almost four times as tall as those stuffy pineapples. Their imperious stares were no longer quite as effective. The currents in the river had a harder time grabbing hold of him and he needed to weave his ropes thicker to hold his weight. Now he could run and climb faster and take more risks.

Like checking out that big, mysterious cave that he'd been eyeballing for a while.

He didn't think he was going to find anything particularly amazing in there, but it was, after all, a big, mysterious cave. It really was about time to find out what was in it. Maybe it would turn out to be the shelter of whatever was always making that loud roar. So far he'd been doing his best to avoid the beast, but his curiosity quickly seemed to be getting the better of him.

What better time for his curiosity to get the better of him than a dark, foggy night? A night like that was better used traipsing around in caves than trying to get a bit of mind rest. Fog always put him on edge if he wasn't occupying himself with something.

Sniffing, eyes narrowed, he edged along the rock face and peered into the dark cavern. Something definitely lived in there. It smelled of rancid meat and stale air and soda springs, and maybe a hint of slow-roasted oyster in pine-nut sauce, although he suspected that last bit may have been his imagination, for the simple fact that nobody in their right mind would ever slow-roast an oyster and then cover it in pine-nut sauce, of all the vile things. Also, he was willing to bet his life on the fact that he was the only thing down here that knew how to cook.

Task at hand. Focus now.

He took a step in, eyes straining through the dark. On second thought, why _was _he doing this in the dark? His nocturnal sight was beginning to kick in as he crept further into the cave, but still all he could make out were shadowy blobs. The cave seemed to slant upwards, in an almost sharp manner, and it was much bigger than he'd expected… usually caves petered off to a point or turned into skinny, annoying, winding tunnels that made him a bit claustrophobic.

No, this was a full-blown cavern. Given, there was a small tunnel near the back, 'small' meaning large enough to admit a flexible allosaurus. But quite obviously, something larger than an allosaurus was the habitant of this cave. He ran a paw over the dirt and dust on the ground, just barely making out the prints of the giant dino who lived here. He'd seen the prints before, in the jungle. They never ceased to amaze him. And was that a… Yes, that was a pile of bones over there. Big bones. Leg bones. This thing had dragged the leg of a long-neck back in here to eat it. That took strength.

The ceiling was scraped clean of stalactites above the cavern, broken debris littering the edges. He paused and stared up there, knowing that its back had to be able to reach up that high. This thing was huge. It was huge, and the wind had started to pick up. It whooshed past the entrance to the cave, creating an eerie dirge and making him wonder if the beast wouldn't be returning soon-like to get out of the bad weather.

Speaking of bad weather, was that _rain_ out there? He supposed it must be. Rain down here meant that the humidity and heat had reached breaking point, and what a breaking point this one would be, if the weather of the past few days were any indication. Which it most certainly was. This was going to be one wet, windy night. He walked further into the cave, wondering what was through that tunnel in the back. Probably led off to somewhere he didn't care to know about. But who knew, maybe it led off to another land, further underground, full of talking rocks and such.

It was a bit eerie, walking straight up the slanted den of the monster. He had to keep himself from breaking out into a sprint. Usually he wouldn't be so spooked but the atmosphere was thick enough to taste. It tasted like danger, which was something like iron and compost and sumac blossoms and very dusty dead things.

Perhaps that thing shoved into that pit in the wall was contributing. It looked like a very dusty dead thing to him. Curiosity piqued and wondering what kind of crazy animal would enter a cave like this (besides himself), he marched up to it.

"Eh," he said, squinting. Funny. It was furry. Not many furry things down here. Awful dusty, it was. Brushing at the old hide, it occurred to him that this thing had been nearly mummified. With the upward slant of the cave and the tunnel that likely led somewhere else, all the draft and moisture would simply pass this little crevice by, leaving the dead thing to sit there and not do too much besides become exceptionally dehydrated. What a small bundle of bones curled up in there. Why in the world had it come in _here _to die, of all places?

The dust brushed away, the fur was still quite soft. He absentmindedly let his paw rest over the body, wondering at the texture of the pelt, trying to make out a color in the dim light. It was too dark to be sure, but there were definitely two tones there, and definitely a few faded spots –

His heart skipped. Could it?... No, no, no. No.

No way. What was he even afraid of? He gave himself a reassuring smirk and reached out for the tip of its tail, which had been hiding the poor creature's head in its last moments. _See, _he said to himself, and flipped the tail away. _Nothing to be-_

The face arrested his vision and thoughts and muscles and he couldn't think or move. His mind spun its wheels and gained no purchase and she was staring straight at him with her empty eyes, fine teeth picking up the lightning and throwing it back in his face accusationally. He let out a forceful exhalation of the breath he had been holding and dropped the tail, ears ringing. Backing away. Denying everything the sight was trying to dredge up from the depths of his mind.

It wasn't going to work. His precious, fragile framework was crumbling, and the very knowledge that she was in here was never going to leave him now.

_Run! _he told himself, and he turned and stumbled and caught himself and ran as if her stare would set him afire, ran back out to the storm. He hit the wall of rain and turned right, running along the rocky outcrop, towards the jungle and the trees and away from that _thing_, lightning ripping the skies in half above him, low clouds roiling angrily, and thunder, thunder, thunder pounding the ground…

That was not thunder.

He skidded to a stop and turned, back scraping the rock.

That big mass there, not twenty bounds away, most certainly hadn't been there before. The shock of what he'd just seen somehow faded into the mist, replaced by the terror that he'd just been taken off-guard and was being chased by a giant dinosaur.

Then it opened its eye, and he realized that the mass that he could see was only the head of the beast. Ruby eye pinning him to the wall. He tried to take it in and instead it seemed to take _him _in, its ultimate judgment seeming like the fiery steps of hell, burning away at his soul and reducing him to the bones of survival, whatever it would take for him to live again. If this is what he was up against, if this great beast was the ultimate enemy, if it was his personal demon that he could throw all his anger and grief and despair at, and if he could just _defeat _it -

The monster dealt the first blow, and its glowing red eye was the last thing that the weasel's right one would ever see…

_

Well.

Everything after that was pretty much genuine, certified, properly-preserved, filed-away history. As good as it was going to get with him, anyways. Knocked out the tooth, made the knife, and launched himself into an all-consuming escapade to defeat the great white beast and in doing so beat down the upwelling of feelings he knew he'd never be able to control. Not that he was aware of it at the time. After he'd gone blasting through Rudy's mouth, he'd had a re-rebirth, of sorts. Started anew yet again, but no teetering on the edge of madness this time. Breaking out of the monster's teeth had been akin to wildly casting himself off the edge of sanityland into the abyss of deep, irrevocable, howling insanity.

Where he had been quite happy, until Rudy had… had gone and done whatever he'd done. Gotten sick, or old, or something else ridiculous. Stopped fighting back.

Now he understood why it had made him so upset. His restless, listless, subtle fear of what was happening. That creeping feeling that had followed him up through the cave and back to the surface world.

Now he understood his anger towards all this confounding, cold, frozen whiteness. His inability to comprehend something that held no meaning at all but to which he pinned all meaning he'd ever struggled with.

Now he understood why he was trapped in a cage made of bone, over a rug made of weasel-pelts, in the home of someone who had also suffered through a terrible loss but hadn't been lucky enough to be a child lost in the jungle at night when it had happened.

The weasel's eye shone dully in the flicker of the little fire and he breathed. He felt so old. He'd never been down that deep in the recesses of his mind before, and he had definitely just touched the very bottom of it. His memories were all finally reawakened and reexperienced and that meant another death. Who he had been had once again died in the wake of another rebirth.

Now he found himself here. All his ugly history and all the legacy that he'd unconsciously carried had plopped him down here in this cage and now he once again had not the slightest clue as to what to do. He hoped that a keen sense of when to think and when to act would help him out of this one but he had the sneaking suspicion that there would be no miraculous rebirth if his next death involved being the subject of the mad human's wrath.

**A/N: I assure you, we are now back in the present. **


End file.
